|
Privacy advocates were dealt a severe
blow April 12 as the Department of Health and Human Services
issued a so-called medical privacy regulation. The entire
1,500 pages
were left intact the way they were written and
submitted in the last days of the Clinton administration.
However, HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson
did say in the ninth paragraph of his statement that he and
the department would "begin the process of issuing guidelines
on how the rule should be implemented."
And therein
lies the rub.
We don't know at this point whether those
guidelines will deal with the flaws NewsMax.com
found in examining all 1,500 pages of the document. Specifically,
one of our senior editors, John L. Perry, a prize-winning
newspaper writer with plenty of experience in government,
found multiple loopholes
and internal contradictions where patient privacy
rights are concerned. But there is little reason for optimism
that future modifications will improve privacy protection.
Thompson said the guidelines "will
allow us to clarify some of the confusion regarding the impact
this rule might have on health care delivery and access. And
we will consider any necessary modifications that will ensure
the quality of care does not suffer inadvertently from this
rule."
In discussing the future "modifications"
and guidelines, Thompson puts all the emphasis on such issues
as proper "access" and the "delivery of health
care," having "access to necessary medical information
about a patient" and things of that nature. These, of
course, are legitimate concerns.
But
the secretary says nothing about privacy.
Only in the early paragraphs of the statement
when he's explaining why he is implementing the rules does
Thompson mention privacy protection. He says, "Our citizens
must not wait any longer for the protection of the most personal
of all information - their health records."
That seems to assume that the rules, as
currently written, are being rushed out to the public to preserve
the privacy of medical records. One could read the secretary's
statement and conclude he believes the problem of the privacy
is a settled issue within the rule, and that it is only "access"
that needs to be fixed.
NewsMax.Com
reading, again of all 1,500 pages, indicates otherwise.
President Bush himself issued a statement
saying that "for the first time, patients will have full
access to their medical records and more control over how
their personal information will be used and disclosed. This
rule will help address patients' growing concerns regarding
medical privacy."
The president could get a good argument
on that from Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association
of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).
When told that there will be modifications
and guidelines, the doctor's reaction was: "That's all
we need. More pages!" added to the 1,500 already there.She
told NewsMax.com that
"just because the Bush administration calls this a privacy
regulation does not make it one. It is anti-privacy."
Orient added that she did not understand
why President Bush is taking credit for this when "all
he is doing is following the policy of his predecessor, a
policy that would in fact abolish privacy."
On April 10, Orient indicated her organization
would go to court over this issue on constitutional and legal
grounds.
Feds Ignore
the People
Kent Snyder of the Liberty Committee,
which like NewsMax.com
had circulated a petition urging the secretary to reject the
new rules, observed: "Only in Washington does 13,535
equal 1. The opinions of thousands of private American citizens
who expressed their specific concerns about the final medical
privacy rule were ignored."
Snyder said he was told that the 13,535
signatures on that petition were counted as "merely one
comment."
That apparently is the same treatment
accorded the NewsMax.com
petition that included more than twice as many signatures
as the Liberty Committee's.
Which raises another question:
How many other
thousands of citizens signed a petition to their government
about their rights to privacy, only to be counted as a small
part of "merely one comment"?
This is "right out of 'The Twilight
Zone,' " commented Snyder.
The decision by the secretary won him
some praise from left-wing Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who
commended Thompson for "protecting" patients' medical
records.
In fact, as John Perry has documented,
the regulations do no such
thing.
Chip Kahn, president of the Health Insurance
Association of America, says
"the
privacy regulations do not provide a uniform standard and
are exceedingly
complex and unnecessarily costly."
HIAA is primarily concerned with cost,
as any insurance company would be. But we at NewsMax.com have
satisfied ourselves in spades that the rule is "exceedingly
complex" and a threat to privacy to boot.
Blue Cross Blue Shield added, "Consumers
lost in today's decision not to delay the privacy regulation."
Again, the cost factor figures in that comment.
According to a Reuters dispatch, HHS will
gradually implement the rules, with full compliance required
by April 14, 2003. "This starts the clock ticking for
compliance," an HHS spokesman is quoted as saying.
But for now, HHS spokesman Tony Jewell
tells NewsMax.com, "If
you want to read the secretary's final decision, just go back
over those 1,500 pages" that ex-President Bill Clinton
approved.
NewsMax.com
| 