I am bewildered as to how I have not seen HIPAA addressed at ALL in these articles. I am unclear on whether the articles are being a little fear mongery by not mentioning that legally this information should be anonymized, if there is no consent to share information, or if the administration is in fact planning to ignore HIPAA.
either that or RFK Jr is so brain-worm brain-holed he is saying things without knowing there are legal things that are in the way of what he's saying, like HIPAA
(I currently work at a mental health facility for adolescents and you best bet no one here would give over any information without a court-ordered subpoena at the VERY least)
My understanding is a hospital can hand over like. Stats. With no names tied to it. But also I don't think there any mechanism to compel without a subpeona, no.
I am really not trying to be doomy, but as someone whose medical records mention my autism diagnosis I really don’t trust this administration to keep those records secure.
little prince
: it's less the admin keeping them secure and more the hospitals not wanting to be found liable. HIPAA violations are 10s of thousands of dollars of fines AND jailtime
so the admin can say they want this info as much as they want, but identifying patients is a HUGE liability for hospitals and any kind of medical facility
but yes, the kneejerk is understandable. but that article is very slanting toward that sort of reaction and NOT providing nearly enough information about how HIPAA works and what patients can do to safeguard their information
which, again, they're trying to act like HIPAA isn't a thing. but hospitals and any medical practitioner will tell you that they're not going to get reliable data if they're not going to take that into account
so the tl;dr of this: it's a stunt. and it's 100% their intention to stigmatize people with these diagnoses. which is the more frightening aspect, but one that can be pushed back against
considering RFK Jr already made some nonsense about finding out "what causes autism by September", we know this is them just trying to act like they're being scientifically minded
I was one of the people who was really stressed about this, and for others who felt the same, Belle's analysis is extremely helpful. I'm really glad she provided this.
re RFK, the law literally hasn't stopped them doing anything. They've repeatedly broken the law. this administration repeatedly, they've been repeatedly told you can't do that.They do it anyway, there's no legal consequence.Of course, he thinks he can do whatever he wants.The law doesn't apply to him.
we get enough doomisms from the mainstream media. we do not need to feed into it when the reality is that actions HAVE BEEN HAPPENING. not as quickly as we'd like but the system was built to be slower, for unfortunately reasons that are not as applicable in the modern age
and especially re: RFK Jr: the point is that the law will stop facilities from simply complying. again: practicioners DO NOT want to pay 10k+ and years of jailtime
which can and would be applied to HIPAA violations. so RFK and his posse can ask all they want but no one actually wants to lose their medical licenses over this shit
yeah the HIPAA stuff is one of the places I am slightly less panicked about - in the same way that I still paid my taxes on time yhis year. Trump et al may not be seeing any personal consequences currently but I absolutely believe consequences would fall on ME, average citizen, and I imagine that is how most everyone who has been trained in HIPAA will feel
re: the NIH getting private data: HIPAA applies to medical places like hospitals and pharmacies but if you use a product like a smart watch to keep track of things, please look into their guarantees on protecting data
because NPR's article on the issue does emphasize that these fuckos are going to be looking into data provided to things like smartwatches and apps as well
In February, the program received an average of 2,100 contacts per day.
I was one of the people who was really stressed about this, and for others who felt the same, Belle's analysis is extremely helpful. I'm really glad she provided this.