By now, you must
think that I only write about doom and gloom. Although not
true, you have admittedly read articles in this column about
the Codex Alimentarius process, civil-asset forfeitures, our
increasing loss of privacy, and, most recently, the
International Criminal Court. All bad news. Now, I’m sorry to
say, there’s more bad news – some of which you may have read
of accurately elsewhere, but more likely read of very
inaccurately in the mainstream press. Starting April 14, 2003,
if not sooner, your medical privacy will be gone.
This latest monstrosity was spawned in 1996 as the so-called
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Once
again, with perhaps noble intentions, this Act was intended to
ease medical data transfer among healthcare practitioners, the
government, and others. At the same time, the massive
centralization of sensitive healthcare information about each
American raised concerns that private medical details would be
inappropriately disclosed. Therefore, a band-aid in the form
of “medical privacy rules” was, amidst much fanfare, put
together, slapped onto the Act, and trumpeted as the solution
to all its potential evils.
Yet despite the misleading name, the “Medical Privacy” rules
will provide no real medical privacy of any consequence for
your or my medical records. To the contrary, the rules
published in the Federal Register on December 28, 2000, in the
twilight days of the Clinton presidency, require that every
doctor share his or her patients’ records with the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services without the patients’
consent. In turn, those formerly private records could then be
disclosed for numerous reasons to third parties again without
patient consent. In fact, your doctor (or HMO) can even refuse
to treat you unless you give your consent. And if, by chance,
you should find out that the government showed some stranger a
copy of your doctor’s notes regarding that red sore on your
genitalia or your shrink’s notes about that crazy revelation
you made to her, then don’t think that you can sue anyone for
that disclosure. You cannot. You can complain, though, to your
healthcare provider or to a federal bureaucrat. That’s it.
There is no private right of action.
But don’t worry, under the medical-privacy rules, most of the
time you won’t even know when your personal information is
being bandied about, so you won’t know when to be embarrassed.
Under the rules, you have no right to be told of disclosures
for most healthcare activities, such as treatment, payment, or
“health care” operations (which covers numerous activities).
Because 92% of Americans, according to a recent Gallup poll,
oppose giving government agencies the unrestrained power to
view private medical records and 88% of Americans oppose
placing private healthcare information in a national database,
the then-incoming Bush Administration promised to modify these
rules to ensure more patient privacy rights. This year it
finally got around to announcing its proposed modifications in
the Federal Register of March 27, 2002. It should not have
bothered. While the previous rules set forth by the Clinton
Administration created enormous privacy loopholes, the new
tinkering made these rules even worse. By substituting
“notification” in place of “patient consent,” the new proposed
rules would take away even the limited consent rights
preserved under the old rules.
All of these rules turn normal medical privacy customs and
laws on their head. As Jim Pyles, an attorney for the American
Psychoanalytic Association, said at a press conference held by
the Institute for Health Freedom last April in Washington,
D.C., “[the proposed changes] eliminate the right that all of
you currently have to not have any of your information
disclosed without your consent. It’s a right you currently
have under most state laws. It’s a right that is reflected in
the professional standards of most medical practices. It’s a
right at the very least which is contained in the current
privacy rule.”
If the current administration succeeds in making already bad
rules worse, then, as the Institute for Health Freedom’s Sue
Blevins warns, “each citizen’s medical records will be freely
shared with health insurance companies, doctors, hospitals,
and medical data-processing companies without his or her
consent. This is a major shift in health-care ethics. It’s
probably one of this country’s biggest power grabs ever.” (See
www.forhealthfreedom.org ).
The bottom line is that, by law, the individual should have
the right to consent to disclosure of his or her private
information. If some people want to entrust such private and
personal information to a government that cannot even keep
laptop computers loaded with top-secret information from
disappearing out of “secure” government offices, then that
should be their choice for themselves only. However, for those
of us who value our privacy and do not want to have to watch
every word that we might say to our doctor because his or her
notes will be published to the world, we should have the right
to keep our personal medical information confidential.
But all is not doom and gloom because legislation sponsored by
Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) to repeal the privacy regulations
is still pending and he has been successful at blocking
funding for the national identifying numbers that the federal
government wishes to issue to each citizen but that more than
90% of us do not want. Unless he succeeds, though, we will all
suffer an incredible loss of doctor-patient trust and quality
of health care. Doctors cannot treat what they do not know
exists. And patients will not speak up if they know their
medical problems will be broadcast to the world. It’s time to
tell your congressional representative how you feel on this
issue.
