FTC Claims Hims & Hers Charged Patients Without Consent And Shared Health Data With Big Tech
['Mary Whitfill Roeloffs']
Forbes - Business
The Federal Trade Commission, California and Utah have sued telehealth platform Hims & Hers Health for allegedly charging patients for prescription subscriptions without their consent and secretly sharing their sensitive health information with tech companies including Meta and Snap.
The complaint alleges Hims & Hers advertised "free" consultations and displayed "Pay $0 today" on its intake forms, then charged patients and enrolled them in recurring subscriptions as soon as a provider wrote a prescription—without giving them the chance to review or decline the treatment.
Once a patient was charged for a prescription, the company made cancellation deliberately difficult, the lawsuit claims, burying the option behind an "Add/remove items from order" button that never used the word "cancel.”
The company is also accused of sharing patients' sensitive health information—including conditions like erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation and hair loss—with advertising platforms despite promising users the service was "100% online, private and secure,” per the complaint.
Hims & Hers called the claims "baseless" in a post on X and vowed to fight them, adding, "This is not enforcement grounded in consumer protection; it is an effort to generate headlines at our expense."