New HIPAA Review

This is the first page of the "NEW" HIPAA form due to Obamacare from my eye doctor:

I included only page 1 because the rest of the document was rather innocuous.  Clearly, the most disturbing part is section entitled:

"OTHER DISCLOSURES AND USES WE MAY MAKE WITHOUT YOUR AUTHORIZATION OR CONSENT"

I've highlighted the reasons that to me are most offensive.  In order of disturbing they are as follows:

 1.     "uses or disclosures for specialized government functions, such as for the protection of the president or high ranking government officials; for lawful national intelligence activities;  for military purposes; for the evaluation and health of the foreign service;"

• Why would my eye records be subject to uses or disclosures for the protection of the president?
• What is a high ranking government official (i.e., Congressman, Senator, Cabinet Member,  Assemblymen, Mayor, School Board member?)
• What exactly is a "lawful national intelligence activity"?
• Military purposes?  Really, does my having reoccurring chalazion effect the outcome of a war somewhere?
• Foreign service?  Hmmmm....  Just plain weird addition to the list.  Maube just covering their bases?

2.      "incidental disclosures that are an unavoidable by-product of of permitted uses or disclosures;"

• This seems overly broad.  Does this mean that if a 'courier' shows up claiming to the from "the government" and this 'courier' takes a peek at my records it's permitted as incidental & unavoidable?

3.      "disclosures to "business associates" and their subcontractors who perform health care operations for us and who commit to respect the privacy of your health information in accordance with HIPAA;" 

• Why is "business associates" in quotes?  Is this supposed to be like "You know "business associates" with a wink & a nod?  
• Subcontractors?  Why isn't it quotes too?

4.      "for audits by Medicare or Medicaid; or for investigation of possible violations of health care laws;"

• Since I use neither Medicare or Medicaid, why do they need access to my records?

5.      "disclosures for judicial and administrative proceedings, such as in response to subpoenas or orders of courts or administrative agencies;"

• I guess this means that anyone with a court order can get access to my records without my consent.  
• Does this mean even if I am not involved?
• I get subpoenas & court orders for judicial proceedings, but what exactly is an administrative proceeding?  
• Can any administrative agency have access to my record?  The IRS?  The local Health Department?  How about the County Board of Commissioners?   Local Board of Elections?  

6.  "uses or disclosures for health related research;"

• Does this mean by colleges?  Can a masters student at a local community college who may be conducting research for the CDC view my records?

7.    "[specify other uses and disclosures affect by state law]"  

• None was specified, but I don't know if this is intended as a catch all for any other reason.  It seems very broad..... 

Admittedly, some of this may have already been in place.  I don't have a copy of the old HIPAA form, so I can't say that all of these were added by Obamacare.  Regardless of what administration created them, they seem to allow legal access to my eye records by virtually any person associated with any government agency or their sub-contractors.  This is very BIG BROTHER.

Insight from an actual Doctor....

So, I recently had my annual eye exam.  I asked the eye doctor what he thought about Obamacare.  Here are some anecdotes from our conversation:

• My Doctor said he believes the goal is to create an assembly line approach to his type of practice where there would be building complexes of eye doctors.  Each doctor would have about 5 minutes per patient to do the exam and then on to the next (my appointment took and hour.  I checked out fine, in case you were wondering).

• My Doctor told me that last week a man came into his office and said he wanted his free glasses.  When my Doctor asked the guy what he meant, the guy said he's got his Obama-phone and food stamps, now that healthcare is free, he wants his free glasses.  I specifically asked my Doctor if he thought the guy was serious and he said it was all perfectly serious.  The guy expected free glasses.

• Then my Doctor went on to explain that he keeps getting notices from Medicare seeking his "group number" in order to be reimbursed.  Since is is a sole practitioner he does have a "group number".  So every time he gets one of these notices he has to spend about an hour on the phone calling Medicare to get it straightened out.  Every time, when he finally reaches the right person they'll say, "Oh, you're right, you don't need a group number because you're a sole practitioner."  To which he'll ask, "Is there a way you can fix it in your system so I don't keep getting asked for my group number?"  And they'll say, "No, that is handled by another department."  

• Until last year, he had to send in his Medicare Claims via a dial-up service.  Yes.  Dial-up.  Some of you my be too young to remember the good old days of 56kps dial-up service with AOL or Earthlink, be I'm serious.  He had to unplug his fax line and use a telephone line to transmit Medicare files until January of this year.  

• But wait!  It gets better!  Not only did they have to use the dial-up service until last year, they had to store their back-ups on 3.5 floppy discs.  YES, THEY DID!  The past few times he upgraded his computer systems he had to purchase stand alone 3.5 floppy drives in order to be compliant.

So this on top of the healthcare.gov website debacle should make you're head spin.  What were they thinking?  One of the biggest reason's Obamacare is failing is because it was too big to begin with....

Healthcare in the U.S. represents 1/6th of the GDP of our country.  This is roughly equivalent to the size of the ENTIRE French economy.  How can this be allowed, much less be constitutional?

Next, I'll be taking a look at the new HIPAA Privacy Practices document I had to sign.  It is even more disturbing....