New medical privacy rules are vague and dangerous

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:03:12 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JAN. 22, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
New medical privacy rules are vague and dangerous

It sounds so simple. Someone has a good idea. Making it harder for strangers to find out the diseases for which we've been treated, say. After all, shouldn't it be up to us to decide whether we want to tell an insurance company or prospective employer about that biopsy, or some even more intimate medical matter?

But then the real world interposes: On the bright side, members of Congress no longer ask tiresome questions about whether the Constitution actually authorizes the central government to meddle in such matters. That's one headache out of the way. But still, do we want to endlessly debate the possible ramifications, when some wise guy like Ron Paul always poses a far-fetched hypothetical case in which the new scheme could do more harm than good? (You know the kind. Propose firing into the air on New Year's Eve, and he's the one who always whines, "Yes, but where will the bullets come dowwwwn?")

So, more and more -- just to speed things along, you understand -- Congress merely passes the rough outlines of a fine-sounding new law, counting on non-elected executive branch bureaucrats to "fill in the blanks" later on -- precisely as Clinton administration bureaucrats last month finally finished churning out 1,500 pages of new medical privacy guidelines authorized under the "Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996."

But even if this means Congress never read these rules before giving them the thumbs-up -- since violators could now face civil and criminal penalties, including stiff fines and even prison time -- you can bet folks in the nation's medical facilities are reading them. And the next time you call the hospital in hopes of finding out how a relative is faring -- even as simple a question as whether your Uncle Bill has died, or been treated and released -- you may find reason to wish your local congressman has issued the bureaucrats a bit less of a "carte blanche."

Just as was predicted in this space, hospitals nationwide are already starting to figure it's better to err on the side of caution than to risk the wrath of the federal government by releasing "too much" medical information.

Sound good? How about when you learn that now, even accepting flowers for a patient -- thus acknowledging that patient is in the hospital -- might be seen as a violation of patient privacy, according to Ron Gority, a spokesman for Penrose-St. Francis Health Services in Colorado?

"These are things we're really going to be looking at," Mr. Gority told a report for the Colorado Springs Gazette earlier this month.

In the end, there will probably be lawsuits in an attempt to have the courts clarify for us "what the new law really means" (all 1,500 pages of it), since our representatives were too lazy -- or in too big a hurry to claim credit for having "done something" about the problem -- to insist on actually reading these provisions (let alone demanding they be rewritten so a layman could understand them) before applying their imprimatur.

Yes, privacy is wonderful. If Congress wants to help, they could start with a strictly enforced provision that any non-Social Security government worker who so much as asks for your Social Security number -- a completely optional designation issued only to those who volunteer to let the central government do their retirement savings for them, which the Congress promised on their sacred honor would be completely optional and voluntary, a secret between you and your Social Security worker, and would never be allowed to become a "national ID number" as known in fascists states -- that any government employee who so much as asks for that number in front of two witnesses, or who demands to see a "photo ID" in any way linked to such a number, shall be hauled away in chains, jailed before nightfall, and held in prison for no less than three years.

Instead, we get a law which does nothing to stop government bureaucrats from extracting, ogling, and trading our most intimate and vulnerable secrets, but which instead guarantees the trial lawyers will make more millions, innocent hospital employees will be dragged through the legal wringer and bankrupted, and in the meantime all too many newspaper reporters calling the hospital to inquire whether auto accident victims or elected officials with gunshot wounds are still clinging to life may well be told: "Sorry, we're not even allowed to tell you whether the ambulance crew brought him in, or just left him out there to die in some ditch. Wish we could help. New 'privacy' law, you know."

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and editor of Financial Privacy Report (952-895-8757.) His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

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Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

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New medical privacy rules are vague and dangerous