Government Disclosures Up
[Guest post by DRJ]
TaxProf Blog via Instapundit:
“The report reveals that the IRS made 7.6 billion disclosures of tax return information to federal and state agencies (up from 5.3 billion in 2008 and 4.5 billion in 2007). Here are the Top 5 recipients of taxpayer information:
1. States: 4,846,131,877 disclosures
2. Bureau of Census: 1,349,028,710 disclosures
3. Congressional Committees: 1,326,054,627 disclosures
4. Medicare Premium Subsidy Adjustment: 39,031,057 disclosures
5. Child Support Enforcement Agencies: 16,418,936 disclosures”
Imagine how many disclosures there will be after ObamaCare takes effect, especially if the IRS is overseer.
The AMA admits that, despite ethical and legal obligations that require health information be kept confidential, “access to confidential patient information has become more prevalent.” Add universal mandates and increased government regulation under ObamaCare and it’s easy to see how the privacy of medical information could be jeopardized, lending support to the Mississippi lawsuit that challenges ObamaCare based in part on privacy right violations.
— DRJ
relax: this is for your own good and we’re experts. no one would ever access your info for an illegal use.
just as Joe the Plumber.
faceless bureaucrat (fb8750) — 4/16/2010 @ 6:22 pmHmmm…when W engaged in “warrantless searches” of a few suspected terrorists and/or their enablers, it was the end of the Constitution and the beginning of the BushHitlerCheneyNazi era. Now, from CNN, NYT, MSNBC: crickets chirping.
RB (bed771) — 4/16/2010 @ 6:40 pmI have submitted two such requests on behalf of my State, to assist in collecting unpaid criminal fines. I did not receive a response to either request and have not bothered to make any more.
The numbers above reflect disclosures, but may be significantly understating requests.
Banzel (b4a91b) — 4/16/2010 @ 6:57 pmMy understanding, from discussion with a bioethicist who was in Washington working on HIPPA, is that it had much more to do with clarifying what pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and others could do in mining data bases for information than an attempt to help protect patient confidentiality.
The problem of the computer age, which I don’t think is addressed, is that computer records with your info and diagnostic and procedural codes are bounced all over the internet with increasing frequency. An insurance company cannot deny a prescription because it is not on the formulary unless it knows the prescription was written, who it was written by, and what diagnosis was listed on the medical record. It’s no longer between you, your doctor, and the pharmacist who filled it with only paper copies that need to be manually requested for information gathering.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 4/16/2010 @ 7:05 pmBut, but, but I was under the impression that there was no right to privacy in the Constitution.
M. Simon (eeb609) — 4/17/2010 @ 11:10 am