I recently gave my phone numbers as a secondary contact for my Mom, a senior citizen who is being treated for cancer by a hospital. Lo & behold, all of a sudden *I* (perfectly healthy) am getting hit with a barrage of unsolicited telemarketing by sleazy medical device peddlers on both my cell & landline. Most of these calls are being handled by the robonomo doohickey, but not all. My Mom had gotten hit with non-stop telemarketing harassment the last time she was treated there for a different illness & was later contacted by the hospital to announce (no surprise) that there had been a massive breach of patient info, including hers.

It's infuriating. The federal government's absurdly onerous HIPPA [patient privacy] regulations which cause medical professionals & administrators so much time & money to comply with  - substantial costs which are passed on to patients & to insurers & eventually to the rest of us as policy holders, of course -  are absolutely worthless if hospitals hire unscrupulous clerks who sell confidential patient info to these sketchy medical device companies run by unethical parasites.

Those who traffic in patient info need to be prosecuted, fined & imprisoned to be made an example of, but I'm not holding my breath.