Do you want to control who can access and use your medical information? Congress is moving rapidly to build a national electronic data interchange (EDI). But, without ironclad privacy protections written into legislation, this 'health care' system will expose your most personal information to employers, insurance companies, consumer reporting agencies, and more.
Make your voice heard today to control who sees and uses your medical records by sending a message to your Congressman today.
The Patient Privacy Rights Coalition is a broad based-coalition working to place ironclad patient privacy protections at the core of legislation building an electronic health network. Read the Coalition's
letter to Congress.
The Coalition goal is to deliver thousands of messages to Congress over the recess, making this the top issue on the agenda upon their return to Washington, D.C. on April 24, 2006.
Tell Congress you want to control who can access your medical information!
Since 2001, Congress has enacted quite a bit of language (1) to specify digital rights, i.e. disenfranchise individual ownership of "data" content; (2) promulgate inter-agency reproduction, derivatives, and distribution of content to other "entities"; (3) extend the reach and pertinence of "data" collected by regulatory bodies; and (4) eviscerate states' laws that broadly protect informed consent or contradict federal mandate.
A vehicle for significant action has been US Dept of HHS which Congress no doubt intended to facilitate HIPAA (1996) for all insureds. However, dismantling individual rights in favor of a nationalized or "rationalized" electronic data interchange (EDI) has had little or nothing to do with clinical performance or economic needs of patients.
If anything it demonstrates the Bush administration's determination to build and sustain domestic surveillance infrastructure over the long, long term.
In a January interview with Kojo Nnamdi, National Health Care IT Coordinator David Brailer suggested "moving the market" toward electronic record sharing is inevitable, because a lot of patient information already in our healthcare system is already electronic -- medical histories, prescription data, laboratory data, radiology images. The question is, how can interoperability improve 'system' efficiencies?
It is inevitable. Doctors that are starting practise today were born after the IBM PC came to market. They were raised in their tradition of using computers to do most things, to shop, to plan travel, and they are not going to go to practises that don't have these tools. In fact, I just saw a survey that showed that whether or not a practise has an electronic health record is now in the top five factors that a physician uses to choose a place to work. (...) So we're moving very quickly with this and it's because of the very strong support that this has in both parties and across not only the federal government but in many state governments. (...) We are trying to use market forces to accomplish the goal of automating the healthcare industry.
Is this what you want American health care to become?