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Known around the world: Private records may be at risk
Boston Herald
Nov. 30, 2003
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Someone in Asia may be looking at your income tax returns or reading sensitive doctors' notes about your medical history.
That may sound like another nightmare case of Internet hackers cracking into sensitive computer files. But it's actually the type of highly sensitive data that U.S. corporations are increasingly making available to overseas workers |
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Liberty groups attack plan for EU health ID card
London Daily Telegraph
Oct. 21 2003
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The European Union took its first step yesterday towards the creation of an EU-wide health identity card able to store a range of biometric and personal data on a microchip by 2008. Approved by Union ministers in Luxembourg, the plastic disk will slide into the credit-card pouch of a wallet or purse.
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Group sues feds over medical privacy
WorldNetDaily
Sept. 6, 2003
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A group consisting of patients, doctors and privacy advocates has filed suit in federal court charging a new government rule actually "eliminates the right to privacy" of past and future communications between doctor and patient.
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Neb. Anti-Meth Program Allows I.D. Check
Associated Press
July 30, 2003
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To battle manufacturers of the illegal drug methamphetamine, a sheriff has raised eyebrows by instituting a voluntary program in which store clerks ask for ID from customers who purchase cold or allergy medicine.
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Comparison of Patient Safety Bills (H 663 and S 720): PART TWO: Building a National Electronic Health Care System
Citizens' Council on Health Care
July 23, 2003
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Comparison of two bills in the U.S. Congress dealing with health care databases. |
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HIPAA's Gamble with Health Privacy was a Losing Bet
Apr. 14, 2003
Privacilla
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Before the HIPAA privacy regulation, a web of ethics, incentives, and laws protected privacy. None alone was sufficient, but combined they were substantial. They were far too quickly dismissed in the HIPAA process, and their survival after HIPAA is in some doubt. HIPAA largely replaced a flexible web of privacy protections with a singular, breakable federal regulation.
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Privacy Villain of the Week:
Minnesota Dept. of Health
Mar. 21, 2003
James Plummer
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The Minnesota Department of Health and Human Services just can't get enough private sensitive health information on that state's citizens. This space reported in December about the Department's quest to set up a massive database with every procedure done and every pill prescribed to patients by hospitals and doctors in the state. And now, the Minnesota HHS is renewing its push for a mandatory battery of tests of children fresh out the womb.
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Health and Human Services "Privacy" Standards: The Coming Destruction of American Medical Privacy
Independent Institute
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Although Americans strongly support medical privacy, recent legislation expands access to individually identifiable medical records without patient permission. How these laws came to pass is a lesson in the political tactics of misrepresentation, tying controversial laws to popular causes, and incrementalism.
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Privacy Villain of the Week:
Kentucky Health Services
Feb. 7, 2003
James Plummer
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When control freaks and would-be regulators hew and cry about the need for government to dictate to private institutions how to manage consumer data, it is prudent to examine what kind of information management quality they are asking for. One typical example is this week's incident in Kentucky where a Health Services surplus computer, marked for resale, was found to be loaded with sensitive medical information, including the names of thousands of AIDS patients.
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Prying Eyes: The End of Medical Privacy
James Plummer
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The truth is that the federal government already has asserted virtually unlimited discretionary power to examine our personal medical records -- without a court order, without a warrant based on probable cause, without any judicial process whatsoever. Law-abiding citizens are the predominant targets and most likely victims of this unprecedented snooping by the U.S. government.
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Medical privacy takes a hit with with HIPAA
Sue Blevins
Christian Science Monitor
Apr. 15, 2003 |
A new federal medical-privacy rule gives data-processing companies, insurers, doctors, hospitals, certain researchers, and others legal permission to share citizens' personal health information - including genetic information - without individuals' consent. |
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Patients 'Have Lost Control' of Medical Records
October 16, 2002
CNSNews.com
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The amended medical privacy rules allow health care providers to disclose detailed personal health information, in many instances without patient consent.
Critics warn that health care providers, health plans and data processing centers will be able to start sharing information -- like past medical records and genetic information -- for the broadly defined purposes of treatment, payment and health care.
"If there's anything in your medical record that you don't want to have disclosed, it's disclosable as of today," said Jim Pyles, an attorney who represents the American Psychoanalytic Association.
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The Peril to Our Privacy
October, 2002
The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty
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The amended medical privacy rules allow health care providers to disclose detailed personal health information, in many instances without patient consent.
Critics warn that health care providers, health plans and data processing centers will be able to start sharing information -- like past medical records and genetic information -- for the broadly defined purposes of treatment, payment and health care.
"If there's anything in your medical record that you don't want to have disclosed, it's disclosable as of today," said Jim Pyles, an attorney who represents the American Psychoanalytic Association.
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Medicare drug-pushers
James Plummer
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This space has at least twice before warned of the anti-privacy rules embedded in the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). As the Congress debates whether and how to incorporate prescription drug benefits into the Medicare leviathan, Sue Blevins, president of the Institute for Health Freedom, has pointed out the chilling implications such a scheme could have for the privacy of American senior citizens.
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Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information; Final Rule
August 14, 2002
Department of Health and Human Services
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The final version of the "privacy rule" for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 |
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Privacy Villain:
HHS and its HIPAA rule
James Plummer, NCC
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The Department of Health and Human Services announced last month that it will be accepting comments until next friday -April 26 - for the final revision of "medical privacy" rules. The "revised final" rule represents a slight change to the already-horrible "final" regulations issued by the Clinton Administration. Under the new rule, doctors and hospitals will be required to open up their records to HHS and other government agents without so much as a court order. The rules also override private contractual arrangements between patient and doctor with a bureaucratic mandate.
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Proposed prescription database in Florida
James Plummer
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Mark Twain is most often credited with the timeless warning that "No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session." But regardless of who gets credit in Bartlett's, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida has done his part in verifying the maxim by expanding the mandate of the current special session to include consideration of a bill creating a state database to track the pharmaceutical purchases of Florida consumers.
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South Carolina's DNA datbase
James Plummer
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There's an episode of The X-Files where FBI Agent Mulder infiltrates a vast secret federal government warehouse stocked with miles of aisles of impossibly high cabinets containing files on American citizens. Mulder finds a file on his partner Scully, including a vial which seems to contain a sample of her DNA. Surely, one thinks, the scenario is mere diversion, the work of a fantasist creating entertainment for the small screen. Yet, two years before that episode aired, the state of South Carolina was already storing DNA samples of every infant born in the state.
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Model Emergency Health Powers Act
James Plummer
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This is a "Privacy Villain of the Week" piece about the Model Emergency Health Powers Act that was being shopped around to state legislatures in 2002. Many of its provisions were ultimately folded in the Homeland Security Act anfter many states refused to pass it.
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HR 2615: Patient Privacy Act of 2001
Rep. Ron Paul
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IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no Federal funds may be spent to develop or implement any database or other system of records containing personal medical information of any United States citizen, or to collect medical records for the purpose of storing them in a database or other system of records.
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Privacy in a Free Country: In Search of Reasonable Principles
Solveig Singleton
April 2001
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This paper examines privacy in four different areas - privacy from government, privacy as consumer protection, employer/employee privacy and medical privacy.
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Comments on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
Jim Harper
March 2001
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Incoherence dooms the regulations to increasing the cost and reducing the availability of health care while failing to address American patients’ legitimate privacy concerns.
The regulations should be withdrawn. Congress, rather than any Executive Branch agency, should decide in consultation with the President what the nature of any federal health privacy protection in the United States should be. These elected officials should make such decisions only after identifying exactly what privacy is, and how it is best protected. The first steps they should take are to stop governments from actively eroding the ability of patients to control health information.
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HIPAA REGULATIONS ON PRIVACY
Donna Boswell, Esq., Ph.D.
President, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
June 2001
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The HIPAA statute, and the regulations and the guidance that have started coming out, are so voluminous and so complex it is going to make Medicare look like child's play. So get ready.
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AAPS Comments on Proposed Privacy Regulations
March 26, 2001
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Once data are entered in standard format into a networked computer, it is technically impossible to guard against widespread dissemination. . . The Clinton/Shalala regulations impose heavy costs and are likely to drive small insurers and small medical offices out of business. . ."Administrative Simplification"-of which the "privacy" regulations are an integral part-depends upon unique national identifiers for both patients and physicians, and provides the infrastructure for the complete government takeover of medicine envisioned by Clinton. . . The Clinton/Shalala regulations would force a major change in the practice of medicine, with a fundamental transfer of power over information from professionals and patients to government agencies.
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