You may rember in early Febreary that the Justice Department was demanding patient records from, among other hospitals, Columbia-Presbyterian, Cornell, and St. Luke's-Roosevelt, for hundreds of women who have had abortions in those hospitals since last November. Since the passage of the so-called Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the Justice Department wants to know more about what abortions are being performed and why.
Horrible, of course but your medical records were confidential, right?
February 12th front-page story in the New York Times, Justice Department attorney Sheila M. Gowan argued before Judge Richard Conway Casey (U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York) that "Individuals no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential."
Well, Charlie Suisman, daily author of The Manhattan Usersguide (manhattanuserguide.com) was plenty galled by this action and thought of John Ashcroft up in George Washington University Hospital
MUG: Good afternoon, we'd like a copy of John Ashcroft's medical records.
GWUH: I'm not at liberty to release those records. Not without a written authorization.
MUG: Well, could you ask him? His department has argued that people have no expectation of privacy when it comes to medical records, so we're sure he wouldn't mind.
GWUH: You'll need to call the media office for DOJ.
So we do, but they're all in a "closed-door meeting."
They promise to call us back. Meanwhile, we buzz Sheila's office and leave a message on her voice mail asking for her medical records. A few hours later, we get a call back from her office telling us "not to confuse what her office has argued with her own private records." Ah, well, that clears everything up.
And this is hard for us to understand ? Mr. Ashcroft's office never calls us back.