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Your Medical Treatment History Is For Sale
PizzaFace writes "The Washington Post reports on the booming business of selling your medical treatment records. Today these are mainly records of your prescriptions, but the data warehouses will soon have records of your lab tests, too. The companies selling these records make it easy for insurance companies to avoid risk by assigning each person a health score, similar to a credit score, or by flagging items in each person's history that suggest chronic or potentially expensive health problems. It's not just for insurers, either; employers who check applicants' credit scores will surely be interested in their health scores as well."
Maybe I'm missing something and there's a loop-hole, but AFAIK In Canada selling this information is illegal, and I thought that medical records were confidential in the US as well (apparently not). In Canada patients and health care professionals have client/doctor confidentiality similar to client / lawyer confidentiality. A doctor's office would lose it's practice if it handed over information to anyone without the patient's consent.
Of course there's downsides to our system too. Since health care is public doctor's can only charge so much and thus the only way to increase their income is to get more and more patients so doctors are over-worked and the waiting rooms are always packed with huge waits. Plus more and more of our top doctors move to the US where they can earn more. There's gotta be some kind of happy medium where everyone wins.
Healthcare rationing! Long waiting lists! Socialism!
Of course, healthcare in the US is already rationed (just according to your ability to pay for it) and you already have to wait for procedures and tests (like the week and a half it took my wife to get the insurance company and various doctors involved to schedule an MRI that everyone agreed she needed).
Insurance companies are probably the worst type of organization to have making healthcare decisions.
And the grantparent-references wikipedia seems to state the HIPAA just makes them give you their privacy statement, but doesn't seem to force them to have a privacy policy that excludes sharing info.
I don't know if it's standard practice everywhere, but my mom works in the radiology department of a hospital and they're explicitly forbidden to give out any information to anyone who doesn't need to know. That is, if you're getting an x-ray, the x-ray tech, the supervising doctor and the doctor who ordered it (along with necessary staff like the secretaries that handle everything) are the only ones allowed to see anything, barring something like a court order. There have been people reprimanded (with a 3 strikes policy) for simply saying to another staffer "oh, did you see so and so was in and has X?"
McCain wants the market to help insurance costs, but it never will, because it's much cheaper for insurance companies to simply avoid insuring sick people than try to drive down costs. Obama has all but dropped healthcare as an issue, and wanted to let people opt out anyway.
I'm a single male without kids, 31 and in great health. I dropped my insurance provider back in 2005 when the 3 month premium went from $900 to $1400 in one fell swoop due to new state mandates on what the insurance company has to provide.
I don't want a package with all the frills, all I want is something to cover catastrophic needs. I can't buy it. New York State refuses to let me have it. I either need to pay for things like child birth, which I obviously have no anatomy to participate in and thus will never require, or else pay directly out of my pocket for everything. I've spent a grand total of $112 on my health care, and didn't miss out on anything, compared to the ~$24,000 I've saved in premiums. I'd gladly pay $200 a month for catastrophic care to cover any accidents, sudden problems like a cardiac arrest, etc, but the state won't let me... probably because they get to count me as a member of the uninsured, so they can leverage it to try to create a socialized system where they control everything.
It's worth noting that the whole HMO industry was created by an act of Congress introduced by Ted Kennedy as a freshman Senator looking to make his mark in 1973 as a response to regular people suddenly being left out of health care after the creation of Medicare/Medicaid increased demand and drove up costs. Government created the situation by interfering in the market, they deliberately keep the market from correcting itself by preventing companies from providing the plans people want, and their "solution" is to allow the government full control. I'll pass, thanks.
Stop Koolaid Politics
It's immediately possible to equate your devil's advocacy to the inability to have empathy for others.
Your good health is nice, and it is also likely to be transient for reasons other than good actions you have taken yourself. Even if you've been a bit of a slut and got HIV (or an other STD), or let yourself become obese (with incumbent diabetes and arteriosclerosis), or have smoked like a fiend, you're still a human, and we still want you to live. Really. Those that don't, having no empathy, are in fact sociopathic and by a component of its definition.
So, Satan, fsck off.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
>No, in theory, you can choose to not sign it, and go somewhere else. (however, pretty much everywere requires it).
Indeed they do not. They will allow you to sign, they will present it as though it is routine, and they will accept it.
They will not require it. And if they push for it hard enough, it can lead to bankrupting civil fines, prison time for the executives, and restitution to the victims.
It is much easier to challenge authority, especially when it comes to confidentiality issues in healthcare, than many people seem to believe.
Have you had a different experience? My employer and my insurance (through my employer) are entirely separate, disinterested parties. My insurer has never asked for any kind of disclosure, nor asked for any access to my medical history, and to the contrary, has made the policy on privacy and disclosure very clear.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I am not an Actuary... but my first programming job (COBOL!) was for a health insurer.
From the American Academy of Actuaries:
Principles of Insurance -- Gambling vs. Insurance
- Gambling creates a risk that did not previously exist
- Insurance transfers the financial consequences of an existing risk for a known dollar amount (premium)
Generally, if something claims to cure EVERYTHING, it really can't. And quite often cures nothing.
My problem with "colloidal silver" is that the proponents of it claim it cures everything... prostate enlargement... cystic fibrosis.... lukemia, depression, skin rash.... cataracts, uhm.. what else have I heard....
Oh and it will bring your grandma back to life, right, I forgot that one.
The problem with claims like that is that they're completely and utterly absurd.
What, exactly does it do?
Has there ever been a double-blind study done by an unbiased research organization (such as a publicly funded university laboratory) that you can cite?
I'm curious...