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It is interesting that HIPAA abolished all references to SSNs in medical data. Member IDs used to be commonly be based on socials pre-2004 or so, when they were promptly changed to different identifiers; all with their own scheme per-healthplan. Based on the speed of health care innovation, it seems like for once every one else must catch up.

"is now recovering well and has an excellent prognosis," according to a statement by Dr. James D. Eason, the program director of the Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute. Jobs "received a liver transplant because he was the patient with the highest MELD score (model for end-stage liver disease) of his blood type and, therefore, the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a donor organ became available.

"The waiting list for liver transplants was smaller than in other states, such as California," Eason said.

While Eason said the confirmation was being provided with Jobs' approval, he cited patient confidentiality in saying that he could not reveal any further information on the specifics of Jobs' surgery.

Hahahahahah! Ahahah, oh, I'm sorry. That is freaking hilarious. Doctor Eason, you better hope that Public Figure trumps HIPAA. Because from this document:

Celebrity and public figures are not subject to different standards than other patients when it comes to hospital policies for releasing information to the media.

I don't know if there's been precedence in the courts but good luck sir!

we may well have a ministry of silly walks.

Monty Python aside, Americans may already have one. Wouldn't pathologically silly walks be under the purview of the ministry of health?

State Secretary Rigmor Aasrud said that the activities in question might be prosecuted as fraud or as violations of existing healthcare regulations.

Whoa, wait a second. That's actually an excellent point. Are personality tests the domain of psychologists, particularly when used to render a diagnosis (even as simple as "you're depressed") unless clearly being used to entertainment value? If so, then it would seem that Scientology is either:

1. Practicing medicine without a license, or
2. Subject to HIPAA privacy regulations.

I can't see how they could avoid being subject to HIPAA if they're presenting their tests as legitimate, informative procedures. If HIPAA does govern them, then I can imagine about 1,000 ways they've violated it based on headlines over the years.

Open source.
Cross platform.
Cool name.
Teamed with Openfire, golden
BTW -and don't take this wrong- if you really are at a HMO/HCP, you should have policies in place that prevent IM to the Internet already in place. There's this thing called HIPAA, don't you know?

Baby boomers have got to be the biggest pack of whiny, self-indulgent motherfuckers that ever lived on this planet. Even though they are all getting old now, they still act like a bunch of goddamn teenagers. The sooner they die off, the better America will be.

A correction: "Social Security" is OASDI, a "trust fund" of government debt that will start to be drawn down in 2017 and exhausted by 2041, at least according to the last projections by the Social Security Trustees.

"Prescriptions for endless psychological disorders and sports injuries" are covered by Medicare: a separately funded program. It in even worse shape -- the "trust fund" is expected to be exhausted by 2017.

Some of us baby boomers have been pointing out the problems with both programs for the last 30 years, and have been effectively told by previous generations to STFU. But at this point, Social Security alone has collected about $500,000 from me (assuming a modest rate of return).

I didn't plan to depend on Social Security benefits. But, my expectation is that I will need them just to pay the increased income taxes that will be required to fund the current administration's spending spree. So, I will offer you the same advice given to me when I was in your position: STFU.

Question for an American: are there any public health campaigns in the USA?

What internerdj said, plus everything listed on HHS's prevention page.

The Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 not only set up privacy rules, it was also supposed to require code sets and standards to allow the "Portability" of health care information. http://www.cms.hhs.gov/TransactionCodeSetsStands/ Also, there are entire companies devoted to using digital technology to offshore medical analysis; so a doctor in India can review your CAT scan or MRI, etc. The pieces are in place; we just need leadership and focus to make something happen in a way that benefits the general welfare.

No flamebait intended (some hyperbole ahead), but parents are idiots when it comes to their kids, and often kids in general. They will abandon the pursuits and benefits of a free society to "protect the children" at all costs. The problem is nowadays they don't actually know what the real threat is and so they are ripe to be manipulated.

There is nothing wrong with the protective emotion in that nature has selected people with this tendency to survive, as this emotional/instinctive reaction was probably exactly what was needed to actually "protect the children" from an attacking tribe. It's the emotion that causes you to cast aside your fears when something real is attacking but it's now being used to fuel fear of an unknown enemy.

We need to balance our emotional response. Children need protection from real threats. Looking at the child abuse stats from 2006 (most recent on the USDHHS site) only 10% of all child abusers are non-parental (and half of that 10% are relatives, with almost half of what's left after that foster parents/relatives).

If we stick with sexual abuse statistics, parents and relatives still account for 60% of that, with friends, neighbors, daycare providers and other professionals making up 10%. Under 25% of sexual abuse is "other", which I guess is your classic "child predator" that we hear about on the news. I was always lead to believe that parents never hurt their children and we really need to pass laws against the people "out there" who are stalking our kids. The enemy is in the home already.

A purely emotional reaction ignores these facts and might put resources in the wrong places than it would really be needed to help more of the kids getting abused.

No flamebait intended (some hyperbole ahead), but parents are idiots when it comes to their kids, and often kids in general. They will abandon the pursuits and benefits of a free society to "protect the children" at all costs. The problem is nowadays they don't actually know what the real threat is and so they are ripe to be manipulated.

There is nothing wrong with the protective emotion in that nature has selected people with this tendency to survive, as this emotional/instinctive reaction was probably exactly what was needed to actually "protect the children" from an attacking tribe. It's the emotion that causes you to cast aside your fears when something real is attacking but it's now being used to fuel fear of an unknown enemy.

We need to balance our emotional response. Children need protection from real threats. Looking at the child abuse stats from 2006 (most recent on the USDHHS site) only 10% of all child abusers are non-parental (and half of that 10% are relatives, with almost half of what's left after that foster parents/relatives).

If we stick with sexual abuse statistics, parents and relatives still account for 60% of that, with friends, neighbors, daycare providers and other professionals making up 10%. Under 25% of sexual abuse is "other", which I guess is your classic "child predator" that we hear about on the news. I was always lead to believe that parents never hurt their children and we really need to pass laws against the people "out there" who are stalking our kids. The enemy is in the home already.

A purely emotional reaction ignores these facts and might put resources in the wrong places than it would really be needed to help more of the kids getting abused.

No flamebait intended (some hyperbole ahead), but parents are idiots when it comes to their kids, and often kids in general. They will abandon the pursuits and benefits of a free society to "protect the children" at all costs. The problem is nowadays they don't actually know what the real threat is and so they are ripe to be manipulated.

There is nothing wrong with the protective emotion in that nature has selected people with this tendency to survive, as this emotional/instinctive reaction was probably exactly what was needed to actually "protect the children" from an attacking tribe. It's the emotion that causes you to cast aside your fears when something real is attacking but it's now being used to fuel fear of an unknown enemy.

We need to balance our emotional response. Children need protection from real threats. Looking at the child abuse stats from 2006 (most recent on the USDHHS site) only 10% of all child abusers are non-parental (and half of that 10% are relatives, with almost half of what's left after that foster parents/relatives).

If we stick with sexual abuse statistics, parents and relatives still account for 60% of that, with friends, neighbors, daycare providers and other professionals making up 10%. Under 25% of sexual abuse is "other", which I guess is your classic "child predator" that we hear about on the news. I was always lead to believe that parents never hurt their children and we really need to pass laws against the people "out there" who are stalking our kids. The enemy is in the home already.

A purely emotional reaction ignores these facts and might put resources in the wrong places than it would really be needed to help more of the kids getting abused.

[citation needed]

I can't find an ideal source at the moment, but most studies report higher rates of women abusing children, regardless of category of abuse (meaning sexual abuse too).

For example, start here and browse around the stats:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm06/table5_1.htm

If you deal with any kind of personal medical information, you have to be HIPAA compliant as well, and their requirements are your requirements.
For those requirements go here http://www.cms.hhs.gov/EducationMaterials/Downloads/SecurityStandardsTechnicalSafeguards.pdf

or you could do a little research yourself before running your mouth off.

in the U.S. there are also conscience clauses in several states that allow pharmacists to refuse to fill a patent's prescription based on religious grounds. this was primarily introduced to to deny women emergency contraceptive pills, but it also opens the door for denying patients other types of medical treatment based on religious prejudices.

Let's say someone makes 5 million a year. Now, let's say there's some really strict things in place to stop them dodging taxes (which most rich people are actually really good at). They get taxed at 50% of their income. They now make 2.5 million a year. Do you really think they're "less powerful" than they would have been at 3, 4 or even just under 5 million?

Lets say that my family makes 250k/year. I think that's acheiveable in my lifetime, although I'm currently not even at 1/3rd of that. I can expect to be taxed MORE than what people at 250k are already taxed at. Frankly, working harder to be taxed more doesn't seem very attractive, but working less to get something for nothing DOES seem attractive. This goes along with keeping the poor, poor. Give hand outs to people, and they'll keep voting for you.

"Fairness" does not advocate the removal of free speech.

Learn what the fairness doctrine is and come back when you can have an educated conversation. And what's being proposed is not the soft rules of '49-'85. The new proposals are much stronger. There's nothing "fair" about it. It violates your 1st amendment rights. Think of it like this... If it was reinstated and inforced, the owners of this site would have to make sure that there would be no more liberal posts than there are conservative posts. We all know that there's probably a 80/20 split here... That would be eliminating quite a few peoples' 1st amendment rights.

just place some sensible restrictions on them.

Yeah, like restrict them from being made? http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=03FA375F-3048-5C12-00CC7D33B6E8E59E http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,347690,00.html And do you know he's already said he wanted to ban all semi-automatic weapons? That's just about every pistol sold today. If he got his way, the only guns allowed would be black powder muskets and single shot rifles. Good luck defending yourself from a carjacker with one of those. Even pistols of the 1800's were 'semi-automatic'

And as far as welfare... The more people get it, the more depend on it. People who decide to work to get off welfare do it because they want a better standard of living than what they can have on welfare. By increasing the amount of welfare people get, you increase that standard of living thereby increasing the amount of people who are content to stay there. http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/indicators06/ch1.htm

Welfare should be supplemental, it should not be something people can depend on. It should be given as a factor of what they are acheiving themselves, and it should reduce as time goes on to give an incentive to get off. When a woman see having babies as getting a raise, and by giving extra benifits to stay unmarried the system is fucked. They should get the same benefits if they are married right now. The current system is a disincentive to marraige.

PURE flamebait here

PURE speculation there. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Please forgive my misuse of blockquote, I am not as proficient as you.

http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2001pres/20010916a.html

"Most people do not become ill from the asbestos they are exposed to. Asbestos exposure becomes a health concern when high concentrations of asbestos fibers are inhaled over a long time period. People who become ill from asbestos are almost always those who are exposed on a day-to-day basis in a job where they work directly with the material. As a person's exposure to fibers increases, either by breathing more fibers or by breathing fibers for a longer time, that person's risk of disease also increases. It can take anywhere from 10 to 40 years for someone to develop an asbestos-related illness after their exposure. Disease is very unlikely to result from a single, high-level exposure, or from a short period of exposure to lower levels. "

The cigarette comment was actually paraphrasing the doctor who treated my father and my grandmother for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis when we were discussing possible environmental causes for their illness. Asbestos wasn't even on the list... but I asked because I believed as most people do, that asbestos was DANGEROUS.

America's poor are in some ways arguably richer than the middle class of America was 30 years ago. They have more stuff, and in fact, they have so much more stuff, not only in America, but in every place where capitalism has been put into place, that the biggest complaint from the left wing these days is that the poor actually have too much stuff.

The poverty level for a single person as of 2008 is an income of $10,400. Hey if you think the poor have it so good maybe you should try it out. Don't spend more than $10,400 for an entire year. I think "having too much stuff" won't be one of your major problems.

Wouldn't HIPAA cover this. Why go to all the trouble to regulate the way information can be transmitted if it can be sold on the open market? Something is screwy.
I quote
Your health information cannot be used or shared without your written permission unless this law allows it. For example, without your authorization, your provider generally cannotâ Give your information to your employer
â Use or share your information for marketing or advertising purposes
â Share private notes about your mental health counseling sessions

http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/consumer_summary.pdf

HIPAA, not HIPPA.

Are you with PETA? Kinda reads like it. http://www.peta.org/
I've always enjoyed the bumper stickers that said: "PETA - People for the Eating of Tasty Animals"
We must have cured hunger in the world 100% in order to justify eliminating entire tasty food groups and then to also make fuel out of our edible grains.

FYI, BSE (AKA 'Mad Cow Disease') infects nervous system and spinal column tissues NOT MEAT (AKA 'muscle tissue'). BSE is caused by defectively folding proteins called Prions. These Prions can cause similar protein mis-foldings in the brains and nervous tissues of people or animals who eat the infected nervous tissues. (It makes the Alpha-helix fold into a Beta-sheet which causes the protein to malfunction/cease to function) See: http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2001pres/01fsbse.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy

I believe you are also referring to the Polonium 210 poisoning and murder of Alexander Litvinenko?... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19374216/
29% of men 9% of women have had 15 or more partners. (meaning 71% have had less)

http://www.durex.com/cm/gss2004Content.asp?intQid=401
average around the world 10.5

http://www.physorg.com/news10824.html
this ones neat because men claimed an average of 31. but 21% of those admitted to lying, to boost their numbers on the the same survey, and of the group that claimed more than 50 partners over 50% of them also admitted to lying.

http://aspe.hhs.gov/HSP/97trends/sd4-4.htm
69% of sexually active teen males reported http://www.denverpost.com/ci_6204119
"Almost one in three American men say they've had sex with at least 15 partners in their lives, triple the rate of similar behavior found in interviews with women, according to a government survey. "

Meaning 2 in 3 have had less.

"The average number of female sexual partners for men was 6.8, said Kathryn Porter, a medical officer for the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Maryland, and one of the study's co-authors. Women reported an average of 3.7 male sexual partners, she said."

http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=1100
This one is neat too, because it breaks down by country, the USA is ~10.5 (it apparently is based on the same data as the durex link.) Turkey ranks highest at 14.5.

The numbers are apparently going up though, when you compare 1960s and 70s surveys to more recent surveys... or maybe people just lie more. After all the sixty's was the era of 'free love'.

Apparently it also varies heavily based on where you live. I think I read somewhere that New York city is apparently double or triple the national average.

See: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa

Centralizing that information takes away control from us as individuals.

I specifically stated that your medical records themselves would not be centralized and that your consent to release would be required and would further fall under the clinical discretion of each of your medical providers.

The only thing I was suggesting is that for emergency purposes, it would be possible to quickly locate records sources that you have explicitly authorized. Whether or not any particular situation meets your consent requirements to actually release the records is a totally different story, which was the whole point you so cleverly failed to understand.

A lot of people go get mental health care and pay out of their own pocket so that it isn't 'in the system'.

Your method of payment has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with your medical records and how they may -- or even MUST, with or without your consent (See: http://www.cdc.gov/ncphi/disss/nndss/PHS/infdis.htm ) -- be legally be released.

Sure, you can choose to go to witch doctors who keep no records to "stay off the grid." So what? Since the whole point of my post was "consent," what's your point? "I'm a super-secret rebel and I don't leave a paper trail?" Well, good for you, but what does that have to do with a single word of what I said?

Your ignorance worries me.

From Google itself: HIPAA does not apply to the transmission of health information by Google to any third party.

Sorry, that was CFR 160.102 and CFR 160.103. You can view it here.

Okay, here is the government telling you that HIPAA doesn't apply to Google. Google isn't a health care provider, nor is it a health care insurance plan, nor is it a health care clearinghouse, by the legal definitions of those terms (check the law if you like), so, no, HIPAA most certainly does not apply to Google or any other company or entity providing a similar service.

And, Google isn't protecting your information via HIPAA because it can't - it's not a "covered entity" under the definition outlined in the law. (That is, they aren't a health provider, billing clearinghouse, or health plan.) Instead, they provide the Google Health Privacy Policy, which seems pretty reasonable. Like HIPAA, it allows them to disclose information when it seems like the government (US, in this case, as that's where the service is limited to) compels it. Before you get hot and bothered, HIPAA allows this too - it's how we tell get to CPS about abused children, for example.

I'm not new here, but I'm used to Slashdot readers being somewhat more informed before having a fit. As a covered entity myself (I'm a physician), I look forward to the day when the patients who come in saying they doubled the pink pills but lost the yellow ones they took for that surgery to remove that thigamajig have a hope of a secure information repository to clarify their history, and potentially save their bacon.

THERE IS LAW: HIPAA http://aspe.hhs.gov/admnsimp/pl104191.htm#1177
Someone need to mail them to the wall for disclosure of medical documents.

http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/

The key here is knowingly or recklessly doing it, The university is in the clear here. They had every reason to expect that the company they were using was protecting the data they gave them.

If I used the same company and heard about this I would immediately switch companies, so although they probably won't get in any legal trouble they will certainly pay a penalty for it.

I work for an insurance claims clearinghouse. The company I work for takes the HIPPA laws very seriously. One big mix up with patient data and no matter how good you are nobody will want to use you.

2 million lost records is a lot, so just about any company would be compelled to own up to it...and they really aren't at risk here since they didn't knowingly or recklessly (geek level arguments about data transport aside) release the data.

Since they didn't technically violate any HIPPA laws, I don't think that they are required to report it to anyone. You can check for yourself http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/

I can also tell you that by their own admission, HIPPA enforcement is complaint driven, they don't do anything until someone informs them of a violation.

Most are only limited by what the law allows. Although a company might speak of ethics, don't expect them to actually practice it.

I agree with these two statements 100%, however...

And why bother about security ethics when there are much more important ethical considerations like how they treat staff? Again, most companies screw most of their staff to the limit of the law.

Treatment of staff is a strawman. It has no bearing on whether security is an issue. I was employed in a medical software company that did not treat their staff terribly yet managed to deploy products that were genuinely unsafe. This was in the imaging dept.of a medical records company - imaging handled diagnostic images as well as records for archival. This needed to be 100%+ HIPPA compliant and was nowhere close. While treatment of staff was decent, security with regard to medical records/images was not at all. I believe this to be an area where security is a huge priority over how the staff is treated.

Department of Education and No Child Left Behind ring any bells?

This sounds would be more like Head Start, which has been mildly useful.

Are you kidding me?!

My wife and I, after reviewing the stats, decided that it was very unlikely that our son would get a disease that was vaccine preventable, but also very unlikely even within that likelihood that it would be seriously life-affecting or lethal. On the other hand, 1 in 150 children has autism, which is ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE for the families affected! My brother has mental retardation, and that was very difficult on the family growing up. There's no disease, or even combination of diseases, that is/are vaccine-preventable that have that kind of risk. Now, that's not to say that the vaccine causes it, but I have read papers, scientific ones, that argue both sides. At this point we'd prefer to take the very minor risk of him getting a disease like diptheria or mumps, which aren't very likely to be serious or lethal, than him get autism if we can try to prevent it.

Also, please note, the sites I've linked to - they're not crackpot sites. When we did our risk analysis for our son, we used the CDC's own data to evaluate his risk. And since they still haven't figured out autism, we as parents have to make our own decisions. The day they figure out what causes it I will throw a party - regardless of if it's vaccines or mothers drinking milk or the father smoking or whatever. Because then we can prevent it. And if it's not vaccines, I'll happily work with our doctor to bring him current. But until then, I have to make my own decision since the CDC can't tell me how to prevent it (autism).

manage[s] to not make more than me. I find myself wondering if they're just lazy, or if we have that many drug addicts, or that many people addicted to government assistance. Are there really people content to run a cash register at the local Quick-E-Mart, who are willing to do nothing to better themselves and improve their family's quality of life?

First, the updated median income figures were actually quite accurate according to HUD data. Interestingly the HUD data combines three different sources to figure out how to update their statistics. Some different census data:

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ocs/liheap/guidance/information_memoranda/im07-02.html

Do you have a problem understanding the point of those figures? They aren't real numbers but adjusted numbers to show how poor a person is when attempting to get government benefits and filing bankruptcy. They are inflated due to the inflation of the area to provide an accurate idea of what it would take to live there. It isn't median income at all. Stop pushing it as so.

confirms that even based off 2005 data using whatever refresher to update to 2008 they use there, Oregon and Florida aren't all that much different. Ohio looks to be doing better likely due to their own Democratic administration.

Lol.. Ohio had 24 year of a republican administration. The democrat governor in charge got in office in 2006, one year after 2005. And BTW, is a democrat acted like you in Ohio, they wouldn't stay in office or ever go there. Not all democrats are doped out socialist who want to take everything. Actually, calling your style of politics a democrat ideal, is doing them a great injustice. There are only a few of them stupid enough to act like you.

The main point is that all the numbers vary so much that your argument that they are meaningful to compare (particularly since Oregon has a large rural population that brings down the state total) doesn't make any sense. Go to Portland and the incomes go up drastically (HUD website shows that as well, but they don't have permalinks to their data).

Ohio has just as much rural population. That's where our so called natural poverty rate comes from. Oregon is no different and Portland isn't the pickled ideal you claim. Hell look at the wikipedia article on it or just search for foreclosure rates and unemployment. There will be tons of newspapers and blog article discussing these problems. But more importantly, even if you count portland and oregon as a success, it pails in comparison with Florida's record that you summarily dismissed based on a name.

Second, I know you are saying we should leave hydro power out. I'm saying we should leave it in. Why should we leave it out? It's a renewable energy, and if Florida doesn't have renewable energy, then why would one live there knowing they are polluting by running computers?

Why do you leave hydro out? Well, that last set of math we did left hydro in. But the problem comes when you are just as much or more of a polluter when you do things the same. So for every non hydro power station, Oregon is producing more pollutants then Florida is. Look at it this way, If we both paint a house, and you use more pain then I do, we can assume a number of things. Your house might be bigger then mine or you waste paint. It turns out that you are waisting pain. So let say we have a lot of housed to pain. You decide to hirer someone to come in and reside some of the houses with a material that doesn't need paint because there is a suitable material (hydropower) that only you can use. Now it looks like I use more paint but the fact is different. You are using more pain per house actually painted then I am. SO sure, you are saving paint but you have done nothing to improve the quality of the paint job. When Oregon expands and needs more electricity (houses painted) they will run out of the natural water resource eventually and either have to buy from elsewhere or build more polluting plants.

Now when your comparing how much Florida pollutes to how much Oregon does, you need to look at the same types of production. It is call comparing apples to apples.

Wikileaks would not post the actual data, it would post a story about how the data had been compromised. They are in the business of reporting whistle-blowing activities - not committing the same crimes they are trying to prevent by making them public.

And if they did post protected medical information, it would be very easy to legally have it removed under the HIPAA laws, and would likely be fined heavily for the violation.


*read-->think-->understand-->post* in that order only

First, the updated median income figures were actually quite accurate according to HUD data. Interestingly the HUD data combines three different sources to figure out how to update their statistics. Some different census data:

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ocs/liheap/guidance/information_memoranda/im07-02.html

confirms that even based off 2005 data using whatever refresher to update to 2008 they use there, Oregon and Florida aren't all that much different. Ohio looks to be doing better likely due to their own Democratic administration.

The main point is that all the numbers vary so much that your argument that they are meaningful to compare (particularly since Oregon has a large rural population that brings down the state total) doesn't make any sense. Go to Portland and the incomes go up drastically (HUD website shows that as well, but they don't have permalinks to their data).

Second, I know you are saying we should leave hydro power out. I'm saying we should leave it in. Why should we leave it out? It's a renewable energy, and if Florida doesn't have renewable energy, then why would one live there knowing they are polluting by running computers?

Third, you say, "they are polluting on average as bad as Florida per megawatthour produced but do so using power stations that don't emit pollution into the air. Tell me, how it this not worse?"

Uhh, What numbers are you reading? Are you reading the Ohio numbers for Oregon? I see 293 vs 1247. It looks like you just multiplied a per megawatthour number with a correction factor for the megawatthours total difference to get the rest of the totals to match with Florida. You shouldn't multiply a per megawatthour number to get it to align for comparison -- it's already a normalized number for comparison! WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING?

Now you're saying I don't know how to look at statistics as a rebuke for another point, but you clearly misread the energy statistics that were the basis for that complaint. Hah! Maybe your mommy should look over your numbers instead of my mommy.

...but, you should consider reporting such happenings

See http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacyhowtofile.htm for how to report ANY event involving HIPAA violations (affecting anyone, not just you or your family).

I work for a company, that has an official policy that requires me to report to the INTERNAL legal department FIRST, instead of directly going to external entities. Find out about yours.

I have to wonder how Google is approaching the legal requirements for HIPAA compliance with respect to the storage and retrieval of healthcare information. Anyone got any pointers on this?

Its certainly not going to happen overnight, but they are working on something

Your wages are already garnished to pay health insurance, it's just that you are not a beneficiary. 46% of US health care expenditures are made with public funds. If we go with the Obama plan it will cost $102,000,000 and cover 23,000,000 people. Clinton plan costs $124,000,000 and covers 45,000,000 people. Or $4,400 vs. $2,700 per person.

Yep. Also a little thing known as privacy laws that make it a TINY bit illegal to mess around with health care records.

Hell, part of this could be stemmed by:

-- installing or increasing more air-locks/decontamination/containment/quarantine areas
-- improving anti-bacterial ventilation and air cleaning/recirculation equipment
-- setting up scanners points to look for flush/sickly people who emit fumes of certain bug signatures

-- make the doctors and staff ALL wear anti-microbial/bacterial surgical masks EVEN FOR NON-SURGICAL visits (hey, they may be amped on anti-biotics, but aren't they still carriers?)

-- emulate (if not doing so already) practices of the travel/cruise industry which separates various linens according to bacterial or viral risk (using color-coded collection bins) to keep certain bugs out of warm linens while keeping less contaminated items from contact. This reduces staff exposure time to numerous critters

Most of all, given today's mass-travel economy/environment, hospitals and clinics should not be "walk-in-as-you-will" facilities. They should have screening or quarantine areas to separate and manage ENTRY of DETECTABLE vermin/air-borne agents. (Might even spark wild, new hospital designs, create jobs, and give politicians something new to do...)

For any interest in medical and tourism practices in effect, see:

http://www.riph.org.uk/pdf/healthAndHygieneOctober2003.pdf

http://www.bundesbank.de/download/meldewesen/bankenstatistik/kundensystematik/naics_2007_canada.pdf

http://chfs.ky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/4614B679-B2EB-4DD8-A486-C4FFDA7A542D/0/CommunityContainmentSupplement1.doc

http://www.hhs.gov/pandemicflu/plan/sup8.html

At least in the US, HIPAA says the contents of your medical record are yours, and the healthcare provider is a custodian of that data. That said, there are some caveats.

* Not all data in an EHR system relating to you is actually part of your medical record. There may be - probably is - some internal clinical communication attached to your chart in the course of clinical operations. Basically an EHR system usually tracks both your record and the providers' own record about you. These different classes of data are pretty straightforward to distinguish most of the time; you own the former and you don't own the latter.

* Providing you with a copy of your record has some cost, and custodians of records are allowed to recover reasonable costs from you to cover those expenses.

* Some data about your records may be disclosed as necessary for Treatment, Payment, or healthcare Operations; these disclosures are limited to the minimum necessary and (generally speaking) are also limited to other entities coveredby HIPAA.

* The government can get what it wants, when it wants, and you and your records custodians have f--k all to say about it.

Within those broad costraints, though... it's yours and your provider should treat it as such.

Erroneous data? I said ADULTS! In fact I'll quote myself since you didn't bother to read what I wrote. Here is a dirty little fact that most people don't know the average adult on welfare is a single WHITE woman with children
The chart you have only includes FAMILIES by the race of the adult family member. So single adults do not count in the stats you provided. If you had bothered to look a bit more for the stats for race/ethnicity for ADULTS only, you would have seen that white ADULTS do in fact make a majority of the welfare recipients by a slim margin.

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/character/FY2006/tab21.htm

There are several books that break down these numbers even further and I can assure you that the vast majority of those white adults on welfare are single mothers and as an interesting side-note most of those single mothers are recently divorced mothers. If you are really that concerned about erroneous data I will be more than happy to give you ISBN numbers for the books after the holiday season and when I have time to look through my collection. There are still many subjects that reliable data can not be found on the internet and this is one of them.

Well, the data on the temporary programs at least bear out the general impression that minorities are over-represented in welfare:

hispanic 26.1%, white 33.4%, african-american 35.7%
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/character/FY2006/tab08.htm

I should sleep, but score 5 posts with seemingly erroneous data irk me. :)

"average" doesn't mean what you seem to be using it for. Do you mean the majority of adults on welfare are white single moms? It seems like a difficult area to aggregate statistics for since welfare comes in so many varieties. I get the feeling you are simply trying to counter one stereotype with its opposite. It sounds plausible, but I am wondering where you get your information? (My attempts so far have led me into a morasse of temporary programs, major programs that changed in '97, separate programs involving dependents,etc. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/acf_policy_planning.html#stats)

investing directly in the health, education, and general welfare of the people do you get a healthy and prosperous body politic.

Generally speaking, you'll find that many, even most, republicans agree with this, it's just that they vary on the best means to achieve it.

Personally, I think that teaching a measure of self-reliance is one of the most important things to do. Government aid is, at least in the USA, historically one of the least efficient means to help people. The most efficient is people helping themselves.

I mean, take medicare, with a budget in 2003 of 278 billion - and 33 billion in estimated fraud. That's 11%. Ouch, and it's not even getting into waste.

Private schools regularly manage to give superior educations for half or even a third or less cost per pupil, without even counting 'special needs' students or budget.

Of course, I tend towards the libertarian end of things, but I'm definitly not an anarchist. Government has it's place, but we need to trim it down quite a bit.

My general philosophy is to structure aid to avoid such that situations like where a family on welfare is actually better off not working than getting a job*, even at a minimum wage job. Where a kid who's smart enough to save his inheritance ends up ineligable for grants, versus one who spends it on a car who is(they were fraternal twins).

Still, I think that most people should have to work a bit for college, in order for them to value it. I also think that we need to renew emphasis on technical schools; not everybody is suited for academic pursuits. There are plenty who are happier with a wrench in hand.

*Obvious exemption would be if they're currently getting training for new career skills, but that's temporary.

Here are links to relevant sites:

Appendix A: Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects

http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.htm

Appendix B: The Belmont Report

http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/belmont.htm