(pages 461-463 of the stimulus plan)
Will I still have the freedom to keep my personal medical history private?
Will it be mandatory for the government to access my medical records whenever they want? I don’t understand.
Will I be able to “opt out” if I want to?
Will citizens still have the freedom to choose whether to give this information out?
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Part of the stimulus plan directs funding to create an IT solution to managing health care records. What this basically means is that they will oversee development of a system to manage these records, develop standards for sharing data with existing systems, etc….
“Will I still have the freedom to keep my personal medical history private?
Will it be mandatory for the government to access my medical records whenever they want?”
Those are two great questions concerning applying IT to health care. Unfortunately, they are not addressed in the stimulus plan, and the de facto way of treating this subject is that your health care records are to have the same privacy in a digital format as they would on paper. In other words, existing laws concerning medical record privacy applies.
I worked at a doctor’s office to install a health IT system, let me tell you, it is not easy and the concerns are many. It is not always apparent how to apply existing laws with the way a health IT system changes the dynamic of managing records. Information sharing between existing systems is not always 1-1 (in fact, it rarely is). And the security concern with an IT system, which might be accessible from the internet, cannot be understated.
This plan in the stimulus bill amounts to some of the pork, we don’t need this now, it won’t create a lot of jobs, and they will be highly skilled jobs not applicable to lots of people losing work today. No one is going to be walking off the street to create this massive system, seasoned professionals with 10+ years of experience will be. It is not going to generate any short term stimulus, we will be lucky to see a positive result in 10 years.
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You will not have an option of keeping your medical records private. All sorts of ‘trusted’ (not by you, but by government) ‘partners’ and their masses of employees will be able to access that information.
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Paranoid much?
I guess you haven’t been listening to the plan.
Dems want to bring medical record management into the 21st century (out of the 18th century, of paper only).
This massively improves efficiency and save piles of money.
It’s not about the government keeping track of individual’s health — it’s about medical providers having medical info at hand when you seek help or treatment; and about the government having accurate statistics on our health (collectively).
It’s not going to affect confidentiality.
If people have been telling you this, those people are liars.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrZWGLxgzpc&feature=PlayList&p=EEE3F51FFB962000&playnext=1&index=19
It is the official nationalization program for the medical profession, there is no provision for opting out, it is compulsory! There is no provision for privacy, nor ‘Doctor ~ Patient confidentiality’.
It nullifies and otherwise voids the IV,VI and VII amendments of the US Constitution as pertaining to the practice of medicine and access thereto.
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What is a National Coordinator of Health Information Technology? Just another piece of “Big Brother.” Read “1984.” :-/
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It is NOT just “Dems want to bring medical record management into the 21st century (out of the 18th century, of paper only).”
Nor will we find that it “massively improves efficiency and save(s) piles of money.”
According to Betsy McCaughy, at Bloomberg.com:
One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446).
Guiding my doctor’s decisions about my care is not efficient. It’s an invasive procedure by bureaucrats.
Furthermore,
Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)
This will give massive power to this administration and future ones, to decide who gets what medical care. Washington has never been good at this. Giving these bureaucrats more and more undefined power is irresponsible, verging on suicidal.
Far from being lied to by the “stimulus” opponents, we are being lied to by the people we elected who say that doing anything, even oppressive and wasteful, is preferable to doing something less, or less hastily, that may actually help.
(Page numbers are from the bill, H.R.1EH.)
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I read the whole thing but im at a loss as we what those pages actually say. A question like this you really need to link the stimulus bill to it. That thing changes everyday so the one your looking at my not be current. And remember that is probably the house proposal the senate is working on their version right now.