"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.
Dante Alighieri"
If everything continues as it is, it may disappear altogether.
We fought the Revolutionary War for four main reasons: 1. The Right for Representation, 2) the Billeting of English Soldiers in private homes, 3) Warrant-less Searches and 4) the Right of Privacy including group meetings.
Over the years this Right been tested in many ways; however, even the liberals admitted it existed when they used it to decide in favor of abortion in Roe vs. Wade.
When the Moderates (buzzword for Liberals) took over the Republican Party, the Congress and the Senate in 1998 leading to the Democrats taking over in numbers in the early 90’s, it was only a matter of time.
In post 9-11, the Patriot Act became the largest ball shot out of the cannon aimed to destroy this right to that date. It included: Warrantless Wiretaps, No-Knock Searches, coercion of libraries, video stores, etc. for background info, coercion of telephone and internet companies for records, and much more. All of these activities would be legal if the warrants were considered by and signed by a judge, but that is no longer necessary. There are many other problems with the Patriot Act, but they go beyond the Right to Privacy.
Now another attack has begun. In the current $790 “Stimulus” package, there are a lot of hidden agendas, one of which further erodes the Right to Privacy.
Under the auspices of “Health Care Reform” monies have been allocated for the following:
1. The creation of a Health Czar to operate and regulate health care.
2. The creation of a committee for approval of drugs and technology for health care. They will determine what measures you doctor can take (if you are covered by a government program such as Medicare or Medicaid) to save your life. For all intents they have the power over life and death.
3. There are several billions of dollars allocated to help doctors digitize all of our medical records and put them into a central data bank, so anyone can access it. Of course they say anyone in the medical field, but you and I both know there is no security, especially when protected or operated by the government.
A central health data bank already exists in New England that is controlled by the insurance companies; however, up to this time, it has never been compromised or used in a negative approach. I certainly do not approve of it myself, but since it is in private hands we have a degree of Privacy.
The government, especially the Feds, will use anything possible to control and manipulate us. A central health data bank is a very powerful tool for that activity. AIDS and other political diseases could be used for blackmail, discrimination or worse. Further, government file security is notoriously in adequate.
The bottom line is that literally millions have shed their blood and died for this right, and we are pissing it away so fast that it makes your head spin. George Orwell was off a few years, 1984 should have been called 2009.
Wake up America,
Bert
Copyright Crickard Publishing 2008. All rights Reserved
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Comments: 32
There is a huge difference between insurance companies saying yes or no to treatment and a "government committee", and I agree that experimental treatment is just that. You can always appeal an insurance company decision. There are very few industry standards. The standard is what is ok, with the person looking at the problem, when it occurs.
My comments were not specifically on this issue. The main comment is that you and I are losing all control of our privacy and personal lives.
Though, if you think that government can handle health care in any way shape or degree, I totally disagree. We could see the day when the “health Czar” determines who lives and who is “Soylent Green”.
My question to you is, are you willing to give up every vestige of "life, liberty, and privacy" to save a few billion dollars???
If it comes to allowing a employer or prospective employer access, few could hold a job. Anyway, it is sad to think that this could even be part of our future.
The majority of people in this country are honest, hardworking, and love liberty and freedom of choice, and Privacy. We have to stick together.
Just as in the first Revolution, we either hang together or hang separately. We can't let the powers to be divide us.
You are correct, that insurance companies, police, prospective employers and many other objectional persons would access them just as they do HIPPA protected records.
Where is the "civil liberties" crowd who were so worried about Bush prying into their privacy seem oddly quite about this health tsar having access to everyone's private medical records. There needs to be some big hoops for anyone who is not a doctor or the patient that the records belong to gaining access. The tsar should have to request in writing from the patient permission to look at the records and the patient should be able to see when and who accessed those records.
I see you are still out there, way out there.
All of the moderate and liberal Republicans except the 3 that just turned coat were defeated last election, and they deserved it.
I wouldn't open my mouth about fear mongering, the current crop in charge can't be beat.
Bert...Let me get this straight. The Patriot Act condones and gives authority for illegal government activity (no argument) and the Patriot Act was a product of a Republican administration (with support from the Democrats...) But...this only happened because the Republican Party wasn't REALLY the REAL Republican Party? The Moderates "took over the Republican Party" (the Republican Party isn't conservative enough) and so we have lost personal rights?
Is this what you are saying? Are you saying that everything the Republicans have done wrong wasn't really their fault because they have been controlled by moderates "liberals"?
It's much worse than you think and the government is only a part of the problem. Do you have any idea what kinds of technology currently exist and soon to be on the market for prying into your personal affairs? This spy-ware and the databases that it can be connected to will be used by all sorts of people. The greater the power of the individuals and groups that use it the greater the threat. This means that the government and the major corporations are the greatest threats, of course, but just stopping one or two of those (if that were possible and it's not) would still leave us with no privacy at all in a few years.
There is only one way to preserve our privacy and our freedoms both economic and social. I have fully described it in Invisible Hand and also made it available at
www.nopom.info
If you value your freedom you will read Invisible Hand.
I don't care about parties. As far as I'm concerned over the past 92 years neither has cared about anything other than power, control, and wealth. There have been some dramatic individual examples to the contrary, but as a group that is it. Most are slaves to their corporate sponsors, unions, and pacs such as trial lawyers.
if you think that as a group either party really gives a rat's ass about you, you are the one on the ledge.
We, the people are on our own!
2. While I am not one for automatically trusting the government, I am more inclined to trust the government that the insurance industry. The insurance industry makes life and death decisions on a profit basis. The government does not have a profit motive.
3. The digitalization of data will save lives. From the simple fact that too often prescriptions are filled wrong because pharmacists can't read the doctor's slip (10% of all prescriptions are misfilled!). From preventing patients from going to multiple doctors that prescribe multiple drugs without knowing about the other prescriptions (known as polypharmacy, a problem mostly affecting older Americans who see multiple doctors for different ailments). From emergency room errors when doctors don't get information regarding allergies and drug reactions in a timely manner. If we expect people to do their jobs, we have to give them the information to do it with.
Yes, privacy is an issue. But the best way to protect privacy is to make the penalties for data theft actual serious offenses. Currently, most data theft gets very little jail time. You can of course sue in civil court, but the chances of actually collecting on a settlement are slim. The risks are low and the rewards are high. We need to take the breaches of security more seriously and punish them more seriously. We need to also put mor resources into pursuing data theft. Law enforcement efforts in this area are woefully underfunded.
But if you put the resources into preventing data theft and design the system appropriately, we can get the benefit of digitized information and keep privacy rights in tact.
Thank you for your well written and intelligent response.
As I have said before, there are problems, though I doubt seriously the intentions of this act is to solve them, but more so to create more specific power and control.
If using this data unauthorized was a capital offense, then I would be more convinced they were sincere.
Until government universal heath then the government is going to have to start looking at the amount of money being spent and then they will start looking at ways to cut cost. Because the government can't pay for everything and that's what will happen when people don't have to pay for the care they will use it more and more. And that will make cost of providing care go up and then the government will look into ways to bring the cost of government health care under control. No profit motive but cost control can be as bad if not worse than profit motive. With profit motive you can drive your customers away if you get too greedy. How will people be driven away from free/greatly reduced government health care. What is the motive to get off government provided health care? Only thing I can think of is that the government starts refusing to pay for procedures for clients.
If (or more accurately, when) patients’ information is breached and patients are not able to opt-out of the NHIN (National Health Information Network) or do not have robust fair information rights such as access, correction, purpose specification, among others, there is a real possibility that patients will cease to trust EHRs (Electronic Health Records) and the systems they flow within such as an NHIN.
Additionally, given the number of entities that have access to patient healthcare information under the current iteration of HIPAA, there is possibility of increased misuse of EHR data given the ease of transmission in the digital environment. Such misuses have been documented by the National Academy of Sciences in “For the Record: Protecting Health Information.” The report gives an example of discrimination resulting from access to genetic information, such as loss of employment, loss of insurance coverage, or ineligibility for insurance. In some cases, discrimination was based merely on evidence of predisposition to a future occurrence of treatable diseases such as hemochromatosis and Huntington’s disease. In an NHIN context, an element such as the personal medical history will provide plenty of fodder for employment discrimination for some patients.
I don't doubt that the individuals and agencies involved with the development of the NHIN plan on robust security. However, the security issues that come into question in planning an NHIN of any size or configuration are quite profound. With multiple access points spanning potentially across the nation and through many different institutions (hospitals, physicians in private practice, insurors, payors, government agencies, etc.), the NHIN has the potential to become a medical security fiasco, and therefore a privacy and confidentiality fiasco. Great care must be used in planning any formal or informal system of records due to the clear risks to patient privacy and confidentiality that security breaches represent.
Privacy and security are both, to some degree, matters of economics. Thus, privacy and security countermeasures have historically worked by raising the costs of undesired behavior. The two main complementary strategies are deterrence and prevention, or the imposition of obstacles. Tactics of deterrence include liability or accountability rules that typically look backward. Tactics of prevention include strict access controls, cryptography, and de-identification of individual patients, among others. Because of the highly personal data contained in medical files, any efforts made must tip strongly in favor of prevention, rather than on relying on punishing bad behavior after the fact as a deterrent.
Thanks
Watch Europe (And the United Kingdom) over the next years and see if you think Islamic Terrorists aren't a problem. The coming destruction and conflicts there will burn holes in your mind.
The Patriot Act has the fingerprints of both parties on it, certainly not a Bush exclusive.
It certainly does have both parties fingerprints in it....I believe the USA PATRIOT Act had only one opposing vote...a Democrat.
"As much as I have no time for the fiscally liberal activities of the Bush administration, any discussion of trials for "Murder", etc. is so far out there to be insane."
Would you consider the death of an "accused" but not charged "terrorist" who dies at the hands of a Bush and company sanctioned torturer or as a result of mistreatment while being held for interrogation...to be "murder"...or "manslaughter"? (Torture was not a part of the USA Patriot Act)
A Freedom of Information Act disclosure to the ACLU:
"Newly declassified Defense Department documents describe a pattern of “abusive” behavior by U.S. military interrogators that appears to have caused the deaths of several suspected terrorists imprisoned at a detention center in Afghanistan in December 2002, just two days after former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorized the use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques against prisoners in that country. The previously secret pages were part of a wide-ranging report into detainee abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay known as the Church Report, named after Vice Admiral Albert T. Church, the former Naval inspector general, who conducted the investigation at the request of Rumsfeld. That report, released in March 2004, said there was “no policy that condoned or authorized either abuse or torture,” which critics of the Bush Administration believed was a cover-up.
But the declassified Pentagon documents, coupled with a report issued last December by the Senate Armed Services Committee, tell a different story and lend credence to claims by civil libertarians and critics of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that refusal to release a fully classified version of the Church Report several years ago amounted to a cover-up. The two pages from the Church Report obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Bush Administration and the Pentagon were released Wednesday. The documents state that the interrogation and deaths of detainees held at Bagram Air base in Afghanistan was “clearly abusive, and clearly not in keeping with any approved interrogation policy or guidance.”.
I'm in agreement with this!
While breaches of digital data are a legitimate threat, the reality is that the majority of identity theft is NOT done by high-tech hackers. For example, 400,000 Americans each year have their security breached because someone stole thier mail. And almost all of them could have been avoided by simply having a PO Box or a locked mailbox. The biggest source of information for ID thieves, however, is your trash. Millions of people have their data compromised each year simply because they don't shred papers before throwing them in the trash.
Just like airplane crashes get the most attention, but car accidents kill more people, so to do data breaches get more airtime but in reality our own behavior puts us more at risk.
This is especially true in the case of EHRs, which are being touted as life savers due to increased accuracy by way of being digitized. Medical identity theft unfortunately may lead to the alteration of medical files. This throws the idea of increased accuracy into doubt for those who are victims of this emerging medical information crime. Digitization may in fact serve to exacerbate this problem, not solve it, particularly in the case of records that are networked.
Medical identity theft is increasingly a sophisticated, organized operation that will require a good deal of time and attention to combat, and it is an issue that will impact any networked system involving EHRs. I'm not saying it is impossible. I used to work for the American Blood Commission which was instrumental in getting blood banks to use bar codes. This decreased human error exponentially, but it doesn't rule out all errors.
This digitization of medical records, while already in progress, will have to take great care in HIPAA regulations/protection of privacy.