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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."

5 of 607 comments (clear)

  1. this is bullshit by joocemann · · Score: 0, Troll

    what the fuck

    (mod this '+5:insightful'. this should be the only response.)

  2. Re:Health care, what health care? by zymano · · Score: 1, Troll

    There is no capitalism/free markets in our health care system.

    Doctors and hospitals need to be transparent about costs.

    We also need to remove the requirements for surgeons to have to go through extensive training to be doctors.

    All of these requirements add to price of service. It's a little monopoly that the med community preserves in the name of safety.

  3. Re:Health care, what health care? by InvisblePinkUnicorn · · Score: 0, Troll

    There is no happy medium between complete and utter rights violations and complete freedom. A government-backed violation of an individual's rights is still a rights-violation no matter how many people voted for it. There is no justification for voting away your responsibility for yourself at the detriment of everyone else.

    Please note: I only object to government-backed services such as these that are funded through force. If you would like to donate to a private service offering insurance to the needy, feel free to do so, and to encourage your friends and family to follow suit. Not only will you have more control over where your income goes, but competition will maximize efficiency while increasing benefits to the care recipient. The only cost, though, is taking responsibility for your own life.

  4. Re:oh gee what a surprise by madseal · · Score: 0, Troll

    You know what's also a great idea? A Government-run universal OS ... No more having to worry about choosing Windows XP, or Vista, or Ubuntu, or Debian, or OS X ... just USA_OS. Think of the possibilities.

  5. Re:Health care, what health care? by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 0, Troll

    By "Social Justice" you mean taking, by force if necessary, from people who have something, and giving it to people who don't.

    I don't call that "Justice" in any sense of the word. Justice cannot be for pro for one group at the expense of another. The fact that majority wants it doesn't make it any less distasteful. That is Mob rule.

    The worst thing about your brand of "Social Justice" has nothing to do with "equality" at all, or even justice. It is nothing more than "all people are equal, but some people are more equal than others"

    No thanks.

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.