Wes Vernon, NewsMax
Monday, April 29, 2002

WASHINGTON -- The federal government is quietly slipping through its proposal to break down the walls of the confidential relation between you and your doctor. The idea seems to be to do it when you're not looking.

Friday, April 26 was the deadline for public comment. If you didn't know that, it's because the Department of Health and Human Services did not go out of its way to publicize that date. And the deadline itself, with some notable exceptions, received scant attention in the mainstream media.

NewsMax.com has documented the chain of events in the medical privacy fiasco that the Bush administration inherited from its Clinton predecessors. We have examined, line by line, how the nearly 2,000 pages of regulations that claim to protect medical privacy, in fact, do the exact opposite.

In trying to cut through the convoluted verbiage in the regulation promulgated in the waning days of the Clinton administration, the Bush people have only made matters worse. In part, this is because they have relied on many of the same bureaucrats who wrote the measure in the first place.

"These rules do little to protect privacy and everything to hinder the ability of doctors to provide quality care, so the Bush administration [would be] right to discard them," declares Dr. Mark Schiller, a practicing psychiatrist, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle.

But the comment period on the additional proposal has slipped by.

NewsMax is urging readers to protest to HHS and to Congress and let the powers that be know they are being closely watched. Even past the official deadline, a strong protest over the stealthy manner in which this comment period has been handled can garner a healthy respect in Washington for an aroused public.

The entire regulation is an outgrowth of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a measure containing many provisions first devised in former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's secret task force, whose legitimacy was ultimately negated by a federal judge.

Originally dubbed the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, congressional left-wingers made lots of noise, warning of dire political consequences to any lawmaker who dared question it.

But Congress typically ended up taking a bow for "doing something," and left the actual rule writing to unaccountable unelected bureaucrats. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) filed a lawsuit last year challenging the original document on the grounds that it violates the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution.

Earlier this month, AAPS told NewsMax it would file another suit challenging the latest insult to injury. AAPS Counsel Kathryn Serkes describes the newest proposal to break down doctor/patient privacy as "another 186 pages of mud." This latest addition to an already confusing picture is not only invasive, but also downright dangerous, says Serkes.

First, it means the patient is likely to be reluctant to share with his doctor information relevant to his proper care. Some patients fear filling a prescription can lead to their being hounded by telemarketers.

The new regulations, if implemented, would "place every American's medical records in the hands of government, by giving HMOs, insurance companies, medical researchers, and other state-favored interests an enhanced right to view medical records without patient consent," charges Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex.

"HHS is stripping patients of the last remnants of control over their health care," Paul added. The congressman, a practicing physician, has introduced legislation that would scrap the entire 2,000 pages.

Attorneys have said the new rule would bare to the world personal matters far beyond information required to treat the medical problem at hand:

"Infertility, cancer, marriage counseling, there's no end to it, " says privacy rights attorney James C. Pyles.

As explained by psychiatrist Schiller:
"The regulations state that if any physician electronically transmits any bill for his patients whatsoever, then the statute pertains to all the physicians patient records. The statute permits the government access to any and all of a doctor's patient records - without a warrant. The regulations are so vague that it appears that just about any government official at any level can seize the records."

Privacy experts believe only an outraged public can stop the momentum of this assault on the confidentiality of your personal medical records.