Remember HIPAA? That’s the federal law that says, among other things, that no one has a right to see your confidential health information without your permission. Well, it would appear that there is at least one entity to which HIPAA apparently doesn’t apply—the federal government itself:
In a proposed rule from Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the federal government is demanding insurance companies submit detailed health care information about their patients.
That means your information may go to D.C. if your health coverage has nothing to do with the government:
It’s par for the course with the federal government, but abstract terms are used to distract from the real objectives of this idea … government bureaucrats would have access to the health records of every American - including you.
But can’t we trust them to keep our private health information confidential. Nope. Take a brief look at their track record:
In one case, a government employee’s laptop containing information about 26.5 million veterans and their spouses was stolen from the employee’s home.
There’s also the HHS contractor who lost a laptop containing medical information about nearly 50,000 Medicare beneficiaries.
And, we cannot forget when the USDA’s computer system was compromised and information and photos of 26,000 employees, contractors, and retirees potentially accessed.
And, even if they can manage to stop leaving large chunks of data lying around, what do they want with all of our data? I don’t think one has to be a tinfoil hat type to feel a little paranoid about their intentions. And what of HIPAA? Is this another case in which the Obama administration is above the law?
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