If you want your medical records released, you have to sign a lengthy disclaimer first. Then they often have to be sent by mail to ensure privacy guidelines are met.
Why so much concern?
Because the government understands that our most personal, sensitive medical documents are both sacrosanct, and in the wrong hands, explosive.
How would you feel if your medical records, the most private information regarding your health, well-being, physicality, and history that’s documented in your records was given to the Attorney General of the state?
How would you feel if your medical records were no longer private and anyone who had a grudge or didn’t like a particular group decided to use those medical records as a means to harass, embarrass or eradicate them?
Maybe you had an abortion.
Maybe you’re transsexual.
Maybe you have HIV.
Maybe you discussed depression or suicidal thoughts.
Maybe you related your sexual preferences.
All this is protected from being used and abused by anyone, least of all our own government.
That’s exactly what happened in 2006 when the Attorney General of Kansas received 90 records of women who had been seen at two abortion clinics claiming they were looking into late term abortions. It took years to finally get to the Supreme Court of Kansas and force their return, along with a recommendation he be sanctioned for improper handling of medical records. By then the damage to those women was done.
Now it’s happening in Tennessee, to transgender patients.
The Attorney General of the state demanded all transgender patient medical records at Vanderbilt University Medical Center be turned over while he investigates potential medical billing fraud. It even demanded, through an order that didn’t require probable cause or a judge’s authorization, emails sent and received from a general LGBTQ health program email address and all the names of anyone referred to that clinic.
If you even visited the website to seek out information, your email was sent to the Attorney General. How is this part of a billing fraud case? No money exchanged hands. Only a desire to learn more about medical options for a particular concern.
Clearly these two cases show how our most private information can be abused. By anyone. Even those voted into office to uphold our legal rights.
As different people are being attacked and demonized anyone could be next.
The facility said they were compelled to hand the records over to the Attorney General, but they didn’t notify patients of this breach for months.
This was a directed attack against a specific population. If billing fraud was the real issue why wasn’t the entire patient population or a random sampling audited?
The answer is obvious.
This time it was transgender patients.
Now a new proposed rule to strengthen HIPAA has 19 Republican Attorney Generals up in arms because it would prevent them from prosecuting women for accessing healthcare in and outside their state.
This change would,
“Shield people who seek, obtain or provide abortions from red state probes. It would bar health care providers and insurers from turning over information to state officials for the purpose of investigating or prosecuting someone who seeks or provides a legal abortion. It would provide more protections both for people who cross state lines for the procedure and those who qualify for an exception to abortion bans in their home state, such as in cases of rape, incest or life endangerment. Who’s next?
It could just as easily be BIPOC, women, anyone else in the LGBTQ community, Jews, or Muslims.
It may not be you or someone you love this time. But everyone is vulnerable to these attacks. Especially when they’re used to manipulate an, “us against them attitude.”
It’s easy to blame others for our losses, problems and failings in life when we are told they are the reason money, jobs and success are lacking.
They are the ones holding us back.
They are the ones taking food out of our mouths.
But once gone, another has to take their place in order to keep the anger and hatred alive.
If we want to be protected then we all have to be protected from this kind of abuse.
Otherwise, as the Martin Niemöller poem says so well,
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin Niemöller
-https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna28072605
-https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/health/2023/06/20/vanderbilt-university-m-turns-over-transgender-patient-medical-records-to-tennessee-attorney-general/70338356007/
-https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/18/biden-hipaa-expansion-abortion-00106694
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I feel it is frightening and disgusting that these things are happening in our “Free” country.