Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - Re: [Homestead] Medical privacy soon to be obsolete

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Leslie <cayadopi AT yahoo.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Medical privacy soon to be obsolete
  • Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 06:05:13 -0800 (PST)

My doc in FL refuses to take health insurance as a form of payment.... She
also puts certain tests on separate invoices, so that those submitting their
receipts for insurance reimbursement don't have to disclose certain tests if
they don't want to.   Her version of fighting back. 
 
Terrible consequences started to ramp up in the 70s, with the invention of
HMO.... another one of those Ayn Rand type things....... Around that time
frame I knew a couple of surgeons were truly incompetent.  'Course who was I
to judge, I wasn't a doctor.  But I knew how/who to tell to have truly
competent judge.  Their priveleges were removed... and of course they were
the first to sign up as HMO providers.  I'm sure that not all docs are
incompetent - but it was absolutely no surprise that these guys jumped on the
HMO band wagon.
 


--- On Sun, 1/18/09, bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com> wrote:

From: bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
Subject: [Homestead] Medical privacy soon to be obsolete
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Sunday, January 18, 2009, 8:12 AM

Privacy of medical records will soon be completely gone. It barely exists
now,
even with the more recent HIPPA laws. If you have insurance through an
employer
, you always sign permission to the insurance company for access, usually
human
resources at your workplace has access, and this information can be betrayed,
sold, or traded.

Wityh this new national centralization, privacy will be dead, unless you are
wealthy enough for complete private pay. This will be terrible and have many
un-intended consequences.

>From this am NYT

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Privacy Issue Complicates Push to Link Medical Data

By ROBERT PEAR

Published: January 17, 2009

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama’s plan to link up doctors and
hospitals with new information technology, as part of an ambitious
job-creation
program, is imperiled by a bitter, seemingly intractable dispute over how to
protect the privacy of electronic medical records.


Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff-designate, said it was
“essential” to protect personal health information.
Lawmakers, caught in a crossfire of lobbying by the health care industry and
consumer groups, have been unable to agree on privacy safeguards that would
allow patients to control the use of their medical records.

Congressional leaders plan to provide $20 billion for such technology in an
economic stimulus bill whose cost could top $825 billion.

In a speech outlining his economic recovery plan, Mr. Obama said, “We will
make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years all
of
America’s medical records are computerized.” Digital medical records could
prevent medical errors, save lives and create hundreds of thousands of jobs,
Mr.
Obama has said.

So far, the only jobs created have been for a small army of lobbyists trying
to
secure money for health information technology. They say doctors, hospitals,
drugstores and insurance companies would be much more efficient if they could
exchange data instantaneously through electronic health information networks.
Consumer groups and some members of Congress insist that the new spending must
be accompanied by stronger privacy protections in an era when digital data can
be sent around the world or posted on the Web with the click of a mouse.

Lawmakers leading the campaign for such safeguards include Representatives
Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Pete Stark of California, both
Democrats;
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont; and Senator Olympia J. Snowe,
Republican of Maine.

Without strong safeguards, Mr. Markey said, the dream of electronic health
information networks could turn into “a nightmare for consumers.”

In the last few years, personal health information on hundreds of thousands of
people has been compromised because of security lapses at hospitals, insurance
companies and government agencies. These breaches occurred despite federal
privacy rules issued under a 1996 law. Congress is trying to strengthen those
privacy protections and make sure they apply to computer records. Lobbyists
for
insurers, drug benefit managers and others in the health industry are
mobilizing
a campaign to persuade Congress that overly stringent privacy protections
would
frustrate the potential benefits of digital records.

One of the proposed safeguards would outlaw the sale of any personal health
information in an electronic medical record, except with the patient’s
permission.

Another would allow patients to impose additional controls on certain
particularly sensitive information, like records of psychotherapy, abortions
and
tests for the virus that causes AIDS. Patients could demand that such
information be segregated from the rest of their medical records.

Under other proposals being seriously considered in Congress, health care
providers and insurers would have to use encryption technology to protect
personal health information stored in or sent by computers. Patients would
have
a right to an accounting of any disclosures of their electronic data. Health
care providers and insurers would have to notify patients whenever such
information was lost, stolen or used for an unauthorized purpose. And patients
— or state officials acting on their behalf — could recover damages from an
entity that improperly used or disclosed personal health information.

Rahm Emanuel, who will be the White House chief of staff for Mr. Obama,
advocated such safeguards when he was a House member from Illinois. “As we
move forward on health information technology,” Mr. Emanuel said, “it is
absolutely essential that an individual’s most personal and vulnerable
information is protected.”

Advisers to Mr. Obama say he favors strong privacy protections but does not
want the dispute to slow down the bill.

Mary R. Grealy, president of the Health Care Leadership Council, which
represents large health care corporations, said the proposed safeguards could
be
an impediment to the widespread adoption of health information technology and
counteract any economic stimulus effect.

In a letter to Congressional leaders, Karen M. Ignagni, president of
America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group for insurers, expressed
“serious concern about privacy provisions being considered for inclusion in
the economic stimulus bill.”

She criticized, in particular, a proposal that would require health care
providers to obtain the consent of patients before disclosing personal health
information for treatment, payment or “health care operations.”

Such a requirement, she said, could cripple efforts to manage chronic diseases
like diabetes, which often require coordination of care among many
specialists.

At the moment, senior House Democrats are determined to include privacy
safeguards in the economic recovery bill. But some insurance lobbyists said
they
hoped Congress would punt on the issue, leaving privacy standards to be
developed by the Health and Human Services Department, where they believe they
can make their case more effectively. Microsoft has joined many consumer
groups
in supporting stronger safeguards. The software giant has developed products
that allow consumers and providers to store and share medical data in a secure
format.

“Health information technology will succeed only if privacy is protected,”
said Frank C. Torres, director of consumer affairs at Microsoft. “For the
president-elect to achieve his vision, he has to protect privacy.”

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, and Peter R. Orszag,
director-designate of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said
electronic medical records could be more secure than paper records.

“If the files are electronic,” Mr. Whitehouse said, “computers can record
every time someone has access to your medical information.” But, he said, the
challenge is political as well as technical.

“Until people are more confident about the security of electronic medical
records,” Mr. Whitehouse said, “it’s vitally important that we err on the
side of privacy.”

The data in medical records has great potential commercial value. Several
companies, for example, buy and sell huge amounts of data on the prescribing
habits of doctors, and the information has proved invaluable to pharmaceutical
sales representatives.

“Health I.T. without privacy is an excellent way for companies to establish a
gold mine of information that can be used to increase profits, promote
expensive
drugs, cherry-pick patients who are cheaper to insure and market directly to
consumers,” said Dr. Deborah C. Peel, coordinator of the Coalition for Patient
Privacy, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union among its members.




_______________________________________________
Homestead list and subscription:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/homestead
Change your homestead list member options:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/options/homestead/cayadopi%40yahoo.com
View the archives at:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/homestead






>From waltonrp AT gmail.com Sun Jan 18 09:18:05 2009
Return-Path: <waltonrp AT gmail.com>
X-Original-To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Delivered-To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Received: by lists.ibiblio.org (Postfix, from userid 3002)
id E813A4C01C; Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:18:04 -0500 (EST)
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.3 (2007-08-08) on malecky
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none autolearn=disabled
version=3.2.3
Received: from wf-out-1314.google.com (wf-out-1314.google.com
[209.85.200.169])
by lists.ibiblio.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 225F34C00F
for <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>; Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:18:04 -0500
(EST)
Received: by wf-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id 28so2717380wff.30
for <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>; Sun, 18 Jan 2009 06:18:03 -0800
(PST)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: by 10.143.31.11 with SMTP id i11mr1473734wfj.289.1232288283617; Sun,
18 Jan 2009 06:18:03 -0800 (PST)
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:18:03 -0500
Message-ID: <86fab8600901180618j473b339ep3840d6dbd8ec6072 AT mail.gmail.com>
From: Robert Walton <waltonrp AT gmail.com>
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: [Homestead] Harnesses and draft horses
X-BeenThere: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9
Precedence: list
Reply-To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
List-Id: <homestead.lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/homestead>,
<mailto:homestead-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/homestead>
List-Post: <mailto:homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Help: <mailto:sympa AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=HELP>
List-Subscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/homestead>,
<mailto:homestead-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 14:18:05 -0000

I'm trying to put together the basics of what harness I need if I get
a draft horse. Looks like expensive stuff. Maybe more than the horse.
What is a basic set up?

I see this ad for a couple of rescue mares:

http://harrisonburg.craigslist.org/grd/995291893.html

I'm a little concerned with rescue horses. I guess it depends on how
abused they were regarding soundness. The good thing is they would not
be pampered like some. Some of the pampered horses seem to me like
they would be more problem.


Rob -Va




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page