Fight for your rights
The new economic stimulus bill may pose a significant threat to your medical privacy.
Unless you haven’t been near a TV or seen a newspaper in the past week, you’ve heard about the new economic stimulus bill that just passed through the House of Representatives. It’s causing quite a bit of controversy among the nation’s economic experts. But some of the proposals included in the bill may affect more than your finances. In fact, Dr. Wright just informed me that it could pose a major threat to your medical privacy.
Take a look at the message he forwarded to me, from the American Association for Health Freedom (AAHF):
“The economic stimulus bill, as currently written, mandates electronic health records for every citizen WITHOUT providing for an opt-out or patient consent provision starting in 2014.
The House has already passed this egregious bill and the Senate will consider the bill starting Monday.
“Without those protections, Americans’ electronic health records could be shared—without their consent—with over 600,000 covered entities through the forthcoming nationally linked electronic health-records network,” says Sue Blevins, Institute for Health Freedom president.
“President Obama has pledged to advance freedom. Therefore the freedom to choose not to participate in a national electronic health-records system must be upheld,” Blevins says. “Unless people have the right to decide if and when their health information is shared or whether to participate in research studies, they don’t have a true right to privacy.”
The bill provides that a nationwide health information database be developed that allows for the electronic use and exchange of information and that facilitates health and clinical research. HIPAA already permits the disclosure of personal health information without patient consent for treatment, payment, and oversight of the healthcare system. The mandate contained in the stimulus bill is yet another attack on the longstanding doctrine of a patient’s right to consent and right to privacy.
Finally, is the stimulus bill even an appropriate vehicle to pass this unrelated matter of developing a nationwide electronic health records database? A patient’s right to privacy should not be taken lightly. Any restriction on a patient’s right to privacy should be open for discussion.
Please write your Senator and President Obama today to express your concern over the ongoing dilution of patient privacy rights.”
Luckily, the AAHF has made it exceptionally easy for you to do just that. Just click on the link below, and it will bring you to a web page that contains a pre-written form letter expressing support for patient privacy rights. All you need to do is enter your personal information into the required fields, then click on the “send message” option at the bottom of the page. From there, the letter will be delivered to President Obama and your state Senators.
