Has anyone heard of this?

I recieved this e-mail today. It doesn't sound good as the writter puts it...

~e-mail... "Last April, after years of committee work and a 3 month public comment period, this country enacted landmark Medical Privacy Rules. These rules put control of medical privacy into the hands of patients. Under these regulations, health care providers needed to get written consent from patients before releasing any medical information.

Now, because of pressures from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, the Administration proposes to eliminate the requirement that patients provide written consent before their medical information is shared!

The public comment period on these proposed changes is very short - all comments must be received by Friday April 26. You can submit your comments online at http://erm.hhs.gov:9567/nprm/comments.cfm" ~

So does this mean that what I tell my dr. will be sold to companies for them to try to make money off of me? This is how the writter seems to put it. I tried to make heads or tails of the web site but was unable to. If someone understands this better, please enlighten me. I would really like to understand what this law is. I am not trying to make anyone mad, I would just like a little education (try not to be too technical, please). Thanks

-- Kate (yngve@theofficenet.com), April 25, 2002

Answers

this may be a repetition of info already at hand but here it is anyway. this kind of thing is coming on so fast and furious these days that it's hard to keep up with the Headlines let alone the details.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27375

-- B. Lackie - Zone3 (cwrench@hotmail.com), April 25, 2002.

No, it means the insurance companies can share your medical records with other insurance companies. Suppose you have epilepsy or are being treated for alcohalism, your medical insurance company can tell your car insurance company which doesn't want to insure epileptics or alcohalics. Or say you apply for life insurance in large amounts because you have a stressful job and bought an expensive house for your trophy second wife, while paying for college for the children of your first family. The life insurance company could call your health insurance company and discover you are being treated for high blood pressure, smoke, and drink 3-5 times a week. This puts you at risk of stroke, so now they can turn you down. Medical ethics forbid health care practitioners from telling on you, but any hospital or professional group larger than a partnership requires patients to sign a release allowing their medical records to be shared with insurance companies. What the bill is trying to prevent is the use of such information beyond paying bills, information sharing amongst companies, etc.

-- Mitzi Giles (Egiles2@prodigy.net), April 25, 2002.

These were privacy regs that the Clinton administration and others finally agreed on (and these were far from perfect, by the way, but better than nothing), that the Bush administration now wants to get rid of altogether.

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), April 25, 2002.

Most health records are kept on computers now by doctors and insurance companies. They are NOT secure. Whatever you tell your doctor can be found if someone is really looking for it. If you believe otherwise, you're sadly mistaken. So much for Doctor/patient privacy.

-- rose marie wild (wintersongfarm@yahoo.com), April 25, 2002.

GT, these are the exact same regulations that the Clintons couldn't get enacted. This proposal is FOR removing the few remaining privacy gaurdS to your records. Just what Hillery wanted. You should be happy Bush is doing them a favor.

-- Chux (chux@chuxworld.com), April 26, 2002.

Chux, these were the ones about keeping the signature provisions (see the original post)--Bush wants to remove them, which I think is wrong.

Actually, unless you drink, smoke, or do drugs (which should make your rates go through the roof), imho everything else in your records should be private, and not used to calculate insurance rates--you can't choose your parents.

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), April 26, 2002.

The HIPAA regulations are 1500 pages and affect healthcare further than just confidentiality and privacy. These following two sites give background and detail if desired on the regulations whose comment period is over today. · Violate the Fourth Amendment by requiring physicians to allow government access to personal medical records without a warrant or patient consent,

Once the information is in a third party database or affiliate it is no londer covered under the Privacy Act and is open to whomever.

Some information is not covered in the Privacy Act for instance genetic information and transplant information.

· Authorizing the government construction of a centralized database of personal medical records with personal health identifiers;

· "Not only can doctors be fined or imprisoned – up to $50,000 and one year – for withholding records, patients can be denied treatment if they refuse to sign the consent form."

(Hence the modifications regarding the “consent form” By eliminating our "consent" we loose the option of "refusing to consent", so we "consent" by default.)

· These regulations were only to be for electronically transmitted medical records but now affect all medical records.

American Association of Physicians and Surgeons-HIPAA history and lawsuit opposing these regulations. http://www.aapsonline.org/ Institute for Health Freedom-HIPAA history and summary of regulations. http://www.forhealthfreedom.org/

-- Celeste (gabriel@w-link.net), April 26, 2002.

Thanks everyone for your input. All and all it sounds like I never want to go to the dr again, at least if I want insurance. How frustrating.

-- Kate (yngve@theofficenet.com), April 27, 2002.

And jsut guess how safe that info is when the office upgrades and auctions off the old computers! They're supposed to clear the harddrive - but....it's been known to happen that overworked, time crunched employees making minimum wage (who'd a thunk it) just delete the info (meaning it's still there, just without idiot-easy access) and can be easily retrieved and used by whoever now owns it.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), April 27, 2002.