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UNIQUE HEALTH
IDENTIFIER NUMBERS
THE ULTIMATE INVASION OF YOUR PRIVACY!
By: Steven Fath
"Bow down before the one you serve. You're going to get what you deserve..."
---Nine-Inch Nails.
"Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled
by perpetually rejuvenated illusions"
---Albert Einstein.
I was recently reminded of the impending deadline for the public comment
period concerning the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act's
(HIPAA) new Final Privacy Rule. To mark the beginning of the largest and most
intrusive "dataveillance" base in the history of the world and the death of
private practice healthcare in America, I thought a review of HIPAA, the
privacy debate, and the subsequent stealth implementation of unique health
identifier numbers would be prudent for several reasons: First, despite
overwhelming public apprehension, every individual, employer, health plan,
and health care provider will be forced to comply with this law and the
information contained within the number will not and cannot remain private
while in the hands of our government. Non-compliance with these Leviathan
rules and regulations will be punishable by fines and imprisonment. This will
become the official National ID system desperately wanted by our friendly
government. Indeed, these "marks" will usher in a new official era of
government control of the individual and the health industry. Finally, I hope
this inquest will illustrate how our government actually works and how it is
unified towards the common goal of control and "The Third Way" despite the
empty rhetoric of feigned liberty and differing ideologies.
"Trust me, I'm from the government."
---Unknown
HIPPA was created ". to make sure that you could take your insurance with you
from one job to the next. To make sure that in this new economy, you would
continue to have access to health insurance, as you moved more frequently
from job to job," stated the recently crowned Secretary of Health and Human
Service king, Tommy Thompson. However, this is a mere sugarcoating of these
intrusive and controlling laws stated by a new administration bent on also
deceiving its slaves. Donna Shalala had a different, but equally dishonest
view, back in 1997; " Until today, Americans had no federal privacy
protections for their medical records.these standards are an important step
forward in protecting the privacy of some of our most personal information."
She added, "We cannot allow the absence of privacy protections to compromise
the quality of care in our nation." This statement reeks with the philosophy
of responsive communitarianism. You know, balancing individual rights with
the common good of the community and social responsibilities. However, how
can a "community" determine the extent of those rights when it is really a
collection of individuals? It can't because only individuals choose, act, and
pursue interests. Therefore, this philosophy is only a euphemism for mob
rule. A perfect fit, by the way, for our Social Democracy, but I digress. My
favorite statement from Donna Shalala reads, "Gone are the days when our
family doctor kept records sealed away in an office file cabinet. Patient
information is now accessed and exchanged quickly." God knows the majority of
us incompetent Americans need Big Brother to handle our most private records
by keeping them out of a sealed locked cabinet in some doctors office. She
also rambled on about the five principles reflected in this law. Tommy didn't
mention these: Consumer Control, Boundaries, Accountability, Public
Responsibility, and Security. Remember, the buzzwords are "protection" and
"privacy". These are the thoughts the federal government wants you to
envision as it legislates the complete opposite. Ultimately, this law will
totally alter, for the worse, the relationship between our federal government
and its citizens. Again, it can be enlightening to Americans when they
finally understand every new administration is essentially the same old
administration in an otherwise unified government seeking to continue the
same overall socialistic plans. Nobel, isn't it?
HIPPA is a gargantuan law also known as the Kennedy-Kassebaum Act.
Specifically, this is a wildly complex myriad of rules and regulations meant
to:
1) Standardize patient health, administrative, and financial data in an
electronic format.
2) Provide unique health identifies for individuals, employers, health plans,
and health Providers.
3) Provide security standards protecting the confidentiality and integrity of
"individually identifiable health information," past, present, or future.
For the rest of us, this means the government is going to assign everyone a
number, collect all of their medical records, store them in a giant
centralized computer bank, and decide who or what entity has access to them.
Because the final rule does not cover procurement or banking of blood, sperm,
or body tissue, your DNA can be recorded and stored without your consent. Did
anyone see the movie Gattica? This effects all healthcare organizations,
physicians, health plans, employers, public health authorities, life
insurers, clearinghouses, billing agencies, information systems vendors,
service organizations, and universities. But I sarcastically repeat, I don't
think the Federal Government wants this law to appear as a hostile takeover
of individual freedoms or healthcare. Nineteen separate security policies
must go into place to meet 61 specific conditions. Non-compliance with these
confusing and convoluted regulations can mean fines up to $25K for minor
infractions and up to $250K and imprisonment for "knowingly" misusing
identifiable health information. Honest, this isn't a government takeover of
healthcare. However, compliance deadlines start exactly on 02/01/2003.
Let's quickly review the costs. Unbelievably, there are differing views. The
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) believes that these added
regulations will actually reduce costs. Remembering that the government
generated these figures, costs are estimated to be $17.6 billion and supposed
savings are estimated $29.9 billion over ten years. Clearly, we are actually
going to make money according to the government. These mandates equate to
more than 33 cents for every new healthcare dollar spent. Along with this tax
money, Congress has been called upon to create a new $1 billion "innovation
fund" to help subsidize promising projects and communicate the necessary and
significant new changes in the health care system. Blue cross and Blue Shield
Association, however, estimated the costs of added regulations alone at $43
billion. Honestly, whom do you believe? By the way, doesn't this all sound
very efficient? The point is; HIPPA is going to create a huge bureaucracy and
cost an enormous amount of money. Does this legislation sound socialistic?
The Final Federal Privacy Rule was needed, get this, when it was discovered
that what our government stated and what it actually attempted to write into
law differed drastically. A governmental press release dated October 29, 1999
claimed these new privacy regulations would improve privacy, when in fact, it
actually prohibited doctors from obtaining patient's consent before releasing
personal medical information for many purposes, states Sue Blevins, founder
and president of the Institute for Health Freedom, a non-partisan, non-profit
Washington-based think tank. Because of this major discrepancy, 52,000
individuals and organizations submitted comments to the HHS. What did the
government do? You guessed it; they reworded and resubmitted the supposed new
improved privacy rules titled the Final Federal Medical Privacy Rule. I feel
better just knowing this, don't you? The real issue is whether there were any
significant changes or just empty rhetoric. Here are the updated myths vs.
the actual facts according to Blevins and Kaigh, you be the judge:
Myth # 1: The final federal medical privacy rule provides Americans a new
right to medical privacy.
Fact: The rule creates a massive federal mandate that requires every doctor
and other healthcare practitioner to share patient's records with the federal
government, specifically the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
without patient consent. This can include an individual's psychotherapy
notes. Ironically, the Office of Civil Rights will enforce this mandate.
Myth # 2: Individuals are guaranteed the right to restrict others from
accessing their medical records without their consent.
Fact: Under this mandate records can be released without patient consent for
the broadly defined purposes of oversight of the healthcare system, FDA
monitoring, public health surveillance, foreign government collaborations,
law enforcement activities, judicial and administrative proceedings, and
licensure and disciplinary actions. Moreover, once the data has been
disclosed to one party, the final rule no longer protects the information.
Myth # 3: The final rule ensures that consent is not coerced.
Fact: Healthcare providers may refuse to treat patients if they won't give
consent to share their medical records. Patients are not guaranteed the right
to restrict access to their medical records for treatment, payment, and
healthcare operations.
Myth # 4: Americans will be able to get a full accounting of when and to whom
their medical records have been disclosed.
Fact: Individuals receive only a limited account, which is unrelated to most
healthcare activities such as treatment, payment, or healthcare operations.
Myth # 5: The final rule provides serious penalties for breaches of medical
privacy.
Fact: Patients have no guaranteed recourse other than to complain to the HHS.
The HHS "may" investigate and individuals do not have the right to sue.
Myth # 6: All individually identifiable health information held or disclosed
by health organizations are covered by the final regulation.
Fact: The regulations do not cover your DNA and the lack of privacy
protections will have far-reaching effects.
Myth # 7: The medical privacy rule provides consumers greater control over
the flow of their electronic medical records.
Fact: The final federal medical privacy rule fosters the development of a
national health information network through standardized codes for for
electronic transactions of payment of medical care. Everybody will receive
unique health identifiers and, therefore, each patient's visit to a doctor
will be easily tracked.
Thus, despite many public objections concerning the purposed privacy issues
enveloped in HIPPA and its Final Privacy Rule, the HHS essentially reword and
repackaged the same laws. In a sense, nothing in the original HIPPA law was
altered. The joke is on us. Quick, someone needs to blame a couple of the
Republicans or Democrats. Wait a second, I remember; this law passed the
House and Senate with bi-partisan support.
One of the ultimate goals achieved through the enactment of this law is a
national I. D. system. Over the last several years, the federal government
abandoned several attempts to impose a National I.D. system and other
intrusive surveillance schemes on the American people secondary to public
outrage. Examples include: The FIDC's mandate for all banks to adopt "Know
Your Customers" procedures which generated over 250,000 negative responses,
and subsequently, moved Congress to repeal the legislation. For similar
reasons, the provision in the Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility
Act of 1996 that would have allowed drivers licenses to become de facto
national identification cards was also repealed. However in this instance,
our government simply cloaked the I.D. system inside so-called medical
privacy and protection laws. The result: HIPPA will not fail to deliver this
time around and our federal government will finally have its national I.D.
system. This further illustrates how the entire government shares a common
vision for the future that supersedes any rhetoric related to party
differences. If you think the "people", in some way, shape, or form, control
our federal government, I have a chip I would like to sell you and slide
under your skin, which will make it easier for you to actually carry your
medical records around with you. Now that's portability. Never mind, there
really is a chip and it contains a smart card and it can carry much more than
just medical records. But that's another story.
Another example of how our government really works can be illustrated by
examining the way the Final Privacy Law was reviewed and altered. After the
Dept. of HHS received thousands of complaints and decided to misrepresent
their intentions with new, but essentially unchanged, legislation, HHS only
consulted multiple other governmental agencies including: the Dept. of
Justice, Dept. of Commerce, Social Security Administration, Dept. of Defense,
Dept. of Labor, Office of Personal Management, and the Office of Management
and Budget. More importantly, HHS did not consult with any privacy or civil
liberty groups or representatives of physician groups such as psychologists,
medical researchers, general practitioners, or nurses. In other words, the
federal government did not consult the very citizens the legislation would
affect the most. Nor did the government consult the health professionals they
desperately seek to control about the possible impact of the purposed
regulatory schemes on patient confidentiality. That's what we call,
"government by the people for the people." Beware of any government, which
confers with itself about changing its laws.
Are you worried yet? Are you asking yourself, "Why haven't I heard more about
this?" Well my friends, you're not alone. A recent Gallup pole survey
conducted on behalf of the Institute for Health Freedom showed:
78% of Americans report it is very important that their medical records are
kept confidential.
84 % of Americans have not heard or read anything recently about new federal
regulations that would change the rules regarding access to medical records.
92% of Americans oppose giving government agencies access to medical records.
88% of Americans oppose storing medical records in a computerized database.
87% of Americans are unaware of a federal law regarding unique health
identifiers.
91% of Americans would not support a plan requiring unique health identifiers.
95% of Americans feel permission should be obtained prior to release of
medical records.
96% of Americans feel that information given to their doctor should not be
included in a national databank.
86% of Americans are against genetic testing without permission.
"Government for the people by the people," right? The HIPAA and subsequent
Final Privacy Rule create rules and regulations that most of the American
people obviously do not desire. We have to ask why. Will these laws improve
our lives or country in the long run? I don't think so. Is this law going to
allow us to "take our insurance with us from one job to the next?" Possibly,
but I doubt it. By the w
