Don't Let Congress Destroy Your Health Privacy in the Stimulus Deal
----- Original Message -----
From: Ashley Katz
To:
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 1:15 PM
Subject: Don't Let Congress Destroy Your Health Privacy in the Stimulus Deal
Don't Let Congress Destroy Your Health Privacy
in the Stimulus Deal
Today is your chance to make a huge difference. Please take action now to close consumer privacy loopholes in the economic stimulus deal.
The House took critical steps to protect Americans' jobs and opportunities by including essential privacy protections in the $20 billion health IT portion of the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Senate version of the bill introduced loopholes that allow the sale and misuse of your personal health information.
A handful of Senators and Representatives are now crafting the final compromise bill. Please urge them to close these damaging loopholes.
None of these consumer protections cost money; all are budget neutral. All protect our opportunities for employment, as well as the taxpayers' investment in health IT. We must safeguard privacy to ensure public trust. Without trust, health IT will fail.
DO TWO SIMPLE THINGS:
1) Tell the Conferees not to destroy the consumer protections in the bill. Congress must restore the practical, common sense privacy protections in the House bill that have been ruthlessly targeted by the very industries that profit from selling our sensitive personal health information. The reasonable, basic privacy modifications we recommend are listed below.
Take action now.
2) Share this email with 5 friends and ask them to watch this short video from CNN and take action. The video clearly explains just how easy it is to access all the nitty gritty details about your health care: doctor visits, prescriptions, diagnoses and more. The reporter found all that information in less than 5 minutes!
Watch the CNN video from our homepage.
Please act now before it is too late. Together we've worked tirelessly these last few months and we've made great progress. Please take a few minutes to protect your private health records today. Take action now.
As always, thank you for all you do.
Deborah Peel, MD Ashley Katz
Founder & Chair Executive Director
PPR urges the following modifications:
a.. Limit income for the sale of protected health information to the minimal costs of preparation and transmittal for purposes of research, public health and treatment
b.. Close the marketing loophole that allows marketing for prescription or health care products or services that were "previously prescribed."
c.. Require the Secretary to write regulations to narrow the broad definition of "health care operations" and determine which of those activities can be conducted with de-identified data or with valid authorization
d.. Require audit trails of all disclosures of health information; the Secretary should not be able to outright exclude any kind of activity from being tracked
e.. Incorporate the essential data security protections included in the House bill that require PHI to be protected when it is transmitted and stored (encryption)
f.. Make sure that "inadvertent" breaches are reported. The California data breach law would be useless if it did not require reporting of "inadvertent" breaches
g.. Ensure the governance process is not dominated by special interests. Standards and policy-setting must be an open, transparent, regulatory process so consumers' rights and interests cannot be eliminated