Drug Costs and Insurance Keep Prices High

The high cost of drugs for US consumers is directly related to the insurance industry and third party billing. The mentality for several decades has been "we can charge what the market will bear, because insurance will cover the costs."

Of course this system is failing. Since the welfare plan for Big Pharma was introduced under the euphemistic "Senior Drug Plan" or Medicare D, as a way the Bush administration repaid the favor for all the Big Pharma money that helped him get elected, and even wrote the drug plan, costs have skyrocketed.

Seeing falling profits the health insurers raised co-pays and developed new creative ways to keep their money.

Now we have a new economic plan leading further down the pike to universal care and the single payer model, in the coming days of the new administration.

We don't see any cost savings plans yet on the government side but there is a minor movement to do so - in exchange for data - at the big box retail companies, and the drug bus.

Drugmakers and retail chains offer meds are bargain prices. But are they worth it?

I keep wondering why it is that more people aren't getting on board for health classes like I taught for many years at Secure Horizons. I'll come teach these same programs at your community organization. All you have to do is ask. You'll not only save money, you may save your health.

Health Care is Facing a Terrible Dilemma

Here we are with s so-called stimulus plan with some serious detrimental impacts on your health care. Big Pharma has pulled out all the bells and whistles to get their heavily armed (with mega-bucks) lobbyists to fight this war.

So where do you stand?

I'm not sure where the citizen stands if you take a look at how Big Pharma pulled the wool over the eyes of Congress and AARP for the now known to be ruinous Senior Drug Health Plan (Part D). It just looks like it is all going from bad to worse, or to $#%^ in a hand basket.

Perhaps you should peruse the following two articles, think about what it means for you, and let you representatives know exactly what you think.

See Pfizer tips for managing journalists which is certainly a good idea as Pfizer is poised to release its ties to doctors.

Cash-strapped U.S. patients may be skipping drugs
Feb 10, 2009
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Americans with financial worries because of the ailing economy may be skipping needed prescription drugs in a wrong-headed attempt to save money, according to a survey released on Tuesday.

Nearly 95 percent of doctors surveyed by Epocrates Inc. said they have some concern that patients may not be taking a prescribed drug correctly because of the economic climate.

The biggest concern among the 700 doctors surveyed was that patients were simply not filling prescriptions or skipping doses. The doctors also said they believed some patients were splitting pills.

The healthcare information company said 55 percent of the physicians surveyed said they wrote more prescriptions for generic drugs, which are cheaper than patented drugs, in 2008 than in 2007.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Will Dunham and Eric Walsh)
Copyright © 2009 Reuters Limited

Sobering results for cost-cutting Medicare projectBy LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner
Feb 10, 2009

CHICAGO – An ambitious effort to cut costs and keep aging, sick Medicare patients out of the hospital mostly didn't work, a government-contracted study found. The disappointing results show how tough it is to manage older patients with chronic diseases, who often take multiple prescriptions, see many different doctors and sometimes get conflicting medical advice.

The study showed just how hard it is to change the habits of older patients and their sometimes inflexible doctors. And it points up the challenges the Obama administration will face in trying to reform health care for an aging nation.

Most of the patients had serious, but common, age-related illnesses including diabetes, heart disease and lung disease. Programs were set up at 15 centers around the country. Only two cut the number of times these patients were hospitalized, and those are still in operation. None saved Medicare any money.

The authors of the study called the results "underwhelming." An editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, where the study appears Wednesday, used the term "sobering."

"The only way you can really do it is by changing patients' behavior and by changing physicians' behavior, and both things are really hard to do," said study author Randall Brown, a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research Inc., in Princeton, N.J., which was hired to evaluate the programs.

Often, these patients need to stop smoking, or lose weight, exercise more, eat healthier foods — a challenge even for generally healthy people. Those changes are especially tough for sick, older patients who often are set in their ways.

"The same thing with physicians," Brown said. "A lot of them feel like they know how to take care of patients, so why do they need a nurse calling up and asking them why the patient isn't on some certain medication?"

Many patients in the study had more than one chronic disease, a common Medicare scenario. In 2002 alone, half of Medicare patients had been treated for five or more ailments, and they accounted for 75 percent of Medicare spending, the study authors noted.

Seeking ways to reduce those costs and improve care, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services selected 15 proposals for test-site programs in 2002. The sites developed their own programs, enrolling a total of 18,309 fee-for-service Medicare patients through 2006.

About half got the patients got the usual care. The others got more intensive, coordinated care. That often involved nurses who acted as go-betweens, helping doctors give patients clear, appropriate advice; counseling patients on changing bad habits and recognizing worrisome symptoms. The nurses were available on a regular basis by phone or in person to answer patients' questions.

Jim Reid, a 74-year-old retired Pennsylvania welder, was among study patients who got coordinated care.

When he enrolled in 2002 in a test program run by Health Quality Partners, a nonprofit group in Doylestown, Pa., he was obese, had high blood pressure, high cholesterol and pre-diabetes.

But Reid was a rare success story.

He actually took the advice offered in group sessions run by nurses. He learned how to read food labels and avoid salty, calorie-laden foods. He also started exercising, walking with a pedometer and building up to a few miles daily.

Now, he breakfasts on oatmeal or vegetable omelets instead of coffee and doughnuts He's lost almost 60 pounds. His blood pressure and cholesterol have greatly improved and his pre-diabetes is gone.

Sticking with the program "is hard," he acknowledged. "As you get older, you don't want to do it." But he said it has "put an extra 10 years in my life."

Reid credits his success to the personal attention of a nurse coordinator.

"I have to have somebody to own up to," he said.

That close, in-person contact with nurses was also a feature of the project's other more successful, still-operating program, at Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa in Mason City, Iowa.

In both programs, each patient had face-to-face contact an average of about once a month with a nurse. That was far more frequent personal contact than in other programs. Both reduced hospitalizations — 17 percent yearly compared with usual-care patients at Mercy, and by about 20 percent in the Pennsylvania program, but only among its sicker patients. That program worked with Doylestown Hospital and recruited patients from area physicians' offices.

Targeting sicker patients and providing frequent in-person contact show the approach has some benefits and that success with future reform efforts "is possible, but it's not easy," Brown said.

Peter Ashkenaz, a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said the agency is evaluating the Iowa and Pennsylvania programs to see if their positive results persist.

He said there are other approaches being tested, some that offer incentives to doctors who meet quality benchmarks, or who use electronic health records to improve quality.

But so far, Ashkenaz said, "as the study shows, we have not yet found broad success."
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On the Net:
JAMA: http://jama.ama-assn.org
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services: http://www.cms.hhs.gov
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press

FEBRUARY 9, 2009,
Drug Makers Fight Stimulus Provision By ALICIA MUNDY
WASHINGTON -- The drug and medical-device industries are mobilizing to gut a provision in the stimulus bill that would spend $1.1 billion on research comparing medical treatments, portraying it as the first step to government rationing.
The fight over the provision is highlighting the tensions behind President Barack Obama's plan to overhaul the health-care system. The administration hopes to expand coverage while limiting use of treatments that don't work well, but any efforts that might reduce coverage are politically sensitive.

The House version of the stimulus package sent shudders through the drug and medical-device industry. In a staff report describing the bill, the House said treatments found to be less effective and in some cases more expensive "will no longer be prescribed."

A Senate version backed by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.) doesn't mention cost as a subject to be studied. And the industry won a battle to add the word "clinical" in describing the research -- adding to the implication that the comparison studies won't look at bang for the buck. The final language is likely to be hammered out later this week in a House-Senate conference committee.

Mr. Obama is under pressure to find long-run health-cost savings as projections show that Medicare spending is on track to severely deplete the federal budget. "Without question, we're headed for more of a public and private push for which medicines work best at the lowest cost in particular patients," said Mark McClellan, former Medicare and Medicaid chief under President George W. Bush.

The $1.1 billion in research funding would be doled out to the National Institutes of Health and other government bodies. "We should focus on producing the best unbiased science possible," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), a strong proponent of the House language.

Mr. Obama supported research into comparative effectiveness during his campaign. Administration officials and leading Democrats in Congress say the idea will help government programs direct their dollars to treatments that are worth the money.

Officially, drug and device makers don't object to that sentiment. But they warn of a slippery slope where the government ends up axing useful treatments just because they cost too much. They have lined up patient groups that get industry funding to lobby Capitol Hill.

A coalition called the Partnership to Improve Patient Care includes the lobbying arms of the drug, device and biotechnology industries as well as patient-advocacy groups and medical-professional societies. Coalition spokesman David Di Martino says the research envisioned in the House bill may be used "in an inappropriate manner that may limit treatment options for patients."

A public-relations firm that is part of one of Washington's most influential lobby shops, Barbour Griffith Rogers, is representing the coalition. A major goal is to give industry a seat at the table when federal officials decide what to research with the $1.1 billion.

Companies "want to control the data, how it is reviewed, evaluated, and whether the public and government find out about it and use it," said Harry Selker, a Tufts University professor who directs its clinical-research program.

That also worries Jerry Avorn of Harvard Medical School, a frequent drug-industry critic. Comparative research "has the potential to tell us which drugs and treatments are safe, and which ones work," he said. "This is not information that the private sector will generate on its own, or that the industry wants to share."

Michael Cannon of the libertarian Cato Institute said comparative effectiveness research "isn't going to do any good because the industry will defund it as soon as it presents a threat."

When the government's Agency for Health Research Quality suggested in 1995 that there were too many unnecessary back surgeries, doctors and industry groups attacked the conclusion. Mr. Cannon noted that Congress at the time slashed the agency's budget and stripped its authority to make medicare-payment recommendations.

"They almost killed AHRQ," said Dr. Avorn. "The memory of their near-death experience hasn't been forgotten."

Dr. McClellan, the former Medicare chief, said effectiveness research can be useful but shouldn't assume pricey medicines are automatically bad. "The goal isn't to avoid expensive drugs, it's to get more value for our health-care spending," he said.

—Jacob Goldstein contributed to this article.
Alicia Mundy at alicia.mundy@wsj.com
Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Stimulus package and your health

UPDATE: Here is the foreshadow of care rationing

New debate on how to decide best health treatments
By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer, Mar 12, 09

WASHINGTON – People's lives and plenty of money are at stake when it comes to determining which medical treatments work best.

So some prominent health industry and patient advocacy groups are trying to reframe the debate over how such decisions are made in order to ensure their interests are protected.

Spurred by $1.1 billion in the recent economic stimulus bill for "comparative effectiveness research," their coalition unveiled a new campaign Thursday with a prominent Democrat and disability rights advocate, former California Rep. Tony Coelho, as its spokesman.

Coelho, who suffers from epilepsy and was a key sponsor of the Americans With Disabilities Act, said the issue comes down to whether disabled people and other patients would get the medical care they need.

"On this issue we need to be at the table," Coelho said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Comparative analysis is wonderful, if it's done appropriately."

Coelho's concerns about what could happen if it's not done right line up with those articulated most loudly until now by Republicans and conservative commentators — that "comparative effectiveness" could morph into "cost effectiveness," with bean-counting government bureaucrats refusing treatments to patients who need them.

It's a big concern for drug and biotech companies too since they could lose out if a treatment they've developed is found to be less effective than a competitor's. But a drug company's bottom line isn't likely to draw as much public sympathy as a disabled person's needs.

That makes Coelho a good face for the Partnership to Improve Patient Care, which formed as the issue began to surface last fall and is funded by groups including the Easter Seals, Friends of Cancer Research, the Alliance for Aging Research, the Advanced Medical Technology Association and the powerful pharmaceutical and biotech industry lobbies.

The partnership also includes some minority and women's groups, mostly as nonpaying members. These groups say they can be underrepresented in studies of medical procedures and want to ensure that doesn't happen with the stimulus money.

The fear is that "research done with a very limited segment of the population would be applied to everyone," Alicia Diaz, federal affairs director for the Cuban American National Council, said after the partnership's press conference Thursday.

Obama administration officials insist that won't happen, noting that the economic stimulus bill specifies that comparative effectiveness research include minorities and women, and promising that disabled people will be included, too.

The purpose of the research is to provide doctors and patients with good information to help them get the best outcomes, and improve the performance of the U.S. health system, administration officials say.

"Information about the relative advantages of different treatments is critical to helping people with disabilities be better advocates for their own care," Health and Human Services spokeswoman Jenny Backus said Thursday.

Asked whether saving money was also a goal, Backus said the first step was to conduct the research and the program is "really about quality of care."

But controversy was stoked when language accompanying a House version of the bill suggested the result of comparative effectiveness research would be that less effective and in some cases more expensive procedures "will no longer be prescribed."

The final bill had different language, specifying there was no intention to "mandate coverage, reimbursement or other policies for any public or private payer."

On the Net: Partnership to Improve Patient Care: http://www.improvepatientcare.org/
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press.

UPDATE: The issue of electronic records and privacy concerns the public in the UK where their NHS plans to make documents avialable to pharamcists...
D. Mail 12.2.09 "CHEMISTS COULD BE GIVEN ACCESS TO PATIENT DATA"
High street chemists will be able to view patients' medical records under controversial plans, it emerged last night. But doctors - including the BMA - & campaigners warn that patient confidentiality could be put at serious risk.
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I have been involved in health freedom activities since the 1960s when I worked in mental health and later on in Haight-Ashbury and at a famous commune in conjunction with the local public health nurse.

From there I stopped off at Chicago 68 and then back home to the east coast for more education in the health professions, future studies, management and whole systems design.

This is some of the path I travelled to get where I am now, an advocate for health freedom and a person known internationally for helping you learn to do the same.

Now we have a clear picture of the backwards spiral, or what you may also call positive entropy, as the system falls in on itself.

Speak Now!

Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research
Columnist George Will in the January 29 issue of the Washington Post first noted that “The stimulus legislation creates a council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. This is about medicine but not about healing the economy. The CER would identify (this is language from the draft report on the legislation) medical ‘items, procedures, and interventions’ that it deems insufficiently effective or excessively expensive. They ‘will no longer be prescribed’ by federal health programs….” Private insurers are expected to follow suit. The CER would dramatically advance government control—and rationing—of healthcare, and the natural health community will have to make its case to this governmental body.

There is deepening cause for concern regarding government involvement in healthcare as the stimulus legislation becomes law. There is abundant evidence that vested interests, which have become pervasive in every aspect of federal legislation, are pulling attention away from wellness, individual responsibility, and true innovation in healthcare. AAHF’s drive to reform the FDA stems from the fact that the FDA—which is truly our government’s involvement in medicine—is responsible for many flawed and destructive policies. The FDA:

• systematically obstructs medical science and innovation;
• forbids and censors the communication of legitimate, peer-reviewed scientific research;
• protects entrenched medical monopolies that pay the FDA’s bills and hire its employees;
• interferes with the rights of consumers to learn about good science (especially relating to food and supplements) that could prolong and save lives and promote health; and
• unnecessarily drives up the cost of healthcare to the point where employers can no longer afford to hire new employees (or even keep old ones), and the entire American economy is threatened.

Every American citizen who values health care freedom of choice must remain ever vigilant that the federal stimulus plan threatens to put a huge government footprint on their healthcare. Help us reform the FDA now!
Thank you to American Association for Health Freedom

Health Links

UPDATE: 9 April
More on the issue of computerized health records -
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UPDATE: 15 February - We are pleased to see that Bloomberg News seems to think that information we posted previously has merit.
However, based on an NPR interview this morning with David Leonhart, I for one have to wonder how he seems to have been so co-opted to believe that electronic health records are really a cost savings option. He seems more interested in using the collected data to find out how to re-do the health care system and to find out what works.
I guess Mr. Leonhart forgot to look up that study done at Harvard School of Public Health that showed that approximately 80% of health care is ineffective. And this is NOT a new study, its just no one has been very willing to step up and admit it after all these years.

OUTRAGEOUS Fed Health Control Hidden In Stimulus2-14-9

(Bloomberg) -- Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama's stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

The bill's health rules will affect "every individual in the United States" (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and "guide" your doctor's decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis." According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and "learn to operate less like solo practitioners."

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

New Penalties

Hospitals and doctors that are not "meaningful users" of the new system will face penalties. "Meaningful user" isn't defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose "more stringent measures of meaningful use over time" (511, 518, 540-541)

UPDATE: Received today: HIPAA Does Not Protect Privacy -

HIPAA Privacy Rule May Inadequately Protect Patient Privacy and Hinder Health Research
Laurie Barclay, MD, Medscape Medical News
February 10, 2009 — The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule inadequately protects the privacy of personal health information and hinders important medical research studies, according to a report issued February 4 by a committee from the Institute of Medicine (IOM).

"We believe there is synergy between the goals of safeguarding privacy and enhancing health research and that it is critically important to our nation's health to strengthen privacy protections and still facilitate research," committee chair and coauthor Lawrence O. Gostin, professor of law and director, O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC, said in a news release. "Our recommendations aim to boost regulations and practices that effectively protect personally identifiable health information, while changing provisions of the HIPAA Privacy Rule or its interpretations that have proved to be ineffective."

The report calls for Congress to authorize the development of a totally different approach to safeguarding personal health data in research, distinct from the HIPAA Privacy Rule. Regardless of who supports or performs the research, privacy, data security, and accountability standards should be uniformly applied to data used in all health-related research.

In the interim, the report suggests a series of changes to improve the HIPAA Privacy Rule and the guidance regarding compliance with the rule given by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Furthermore, because security breaches are a growing problem for health information databases, all institutions participating in medical research should heighten their standards for data protection. For example, encryption should be required for all laptops, flash drives, and other portable media storing sensitive data, as these devices can easily be lost or stolen.

Specific recommendations offered by the IOM committee include the following.

Congress should authorize Health and Human Services (HHS) and other appropriate federal agencies to develop a novel strategy for protecting privacy to be applied uniformly to all health research. HHS should exempt medical research from the HIPAA Privacy Rule once this new approach is implemented.

All health records used in research should be subject to privacy, security, transparency, and accountability obligations.

However, if national policy makers opt not to implement the above recommendation and instead opt for continued reliance on the HIPAA Privacy Rule, the committee recommends the following.
HHS should revise the HIPAA Privacy Rule and associated guidance.
Using revised and expanded guidance and recommendations for uniformity, HHS should reduce variability in interpreting the HIPAA Privacy Rule in health research by covered entities, institutional review boards (IRBs), and Privacy Boards.
HHS should develop a dynamic, ongoing strategy to improve empirical knowledge regarding current "best practices" in responsible research designed to protect privacy when protected health information (PHI) is used, and it should promote use of identified best practices.
To enhance privacy in research, HHS should promote increased use of "limited datasets," or partially deidentified data, and develop clear guidance on how to implement and comply with the associated data use agreements more efficiently and effectively. This should facilitate increased use and usability of data with direct identifiers removed.
To ensure appropriate IRB and Privacy Board oversight of PHI disclosures, HHS should clarify the distinctions between research and practice.
To enhance appropriate IRB and Privacy Board oversight of identification and recruitment of potential research subjects, HHS guidance documents should simplify the HIPAA Privacy Rule's provisions concerning the use of PHI in activities preparatory to research and harmonize those provisions with the Common Rule.
HHS should develop guidance materials regarding more effective use of existing data and materials for health research and public health purposes.
To facilitate use of repositories for health research, HHS should develop guidance clearly stating that individuals can authorize use of PHI stored in databases or associated with biospecimen banks for specified future research. As is allowed under the Common Rule, this would be done under the HIPAA Privacy Rule with IRB/Privacy Board oversight.
To simplify authorization for interrelated research activities, HHS should develop clear guidance for use of a single, multipurpose disclosure form. This form would allow individuals to authorize use and disclosure of health information in a clinical trial and to authorize the storage of their biospecimens collected during that trial.
Explaining the circumstances in which DNA samples or sequences are considered PHI would facilitate appropriate use of DNA in medical research.
To improve availability of data sets for research in a way that safeguards privacy, confidentiality, and security, HHS should develop a mechanism to link data from multiple sources.
Sections of the HIPAA Privacy Rule that involve heavy burdens for covered entities and hinder research without providing substantive improvements in patient privacy should be revised.
The requirements for accounting of disclosures of PHI for research should be revised by HHS.
To facilitate appropriate authorization requirements for responsible research, HHS should simplify the criteria used by IRBs and Privacy Boards in determining when they can waive the requirements to obtain authorization from each patient whose PHI will be used for a research study.
The committee suggests that the following recommendations, which are independent of the Privacy Rule, should be adopted regardless of whether recommendations I or II are implemented.
Changes required whether or not both policy options above should be implemented.
All health research institutions, including both covered and noncovered entities, should take strong measures to protect the security of health data. HHS should also support development and implementation of new security technologies and self-evaluation standards.
For members of IRBs and Privacy Boards who serve in good faith, HHS and/or Congress should offer reasonable protection against civil suits to encourage service on IRBs. However, there should be no protection for willful or wanton misconduct.
To better educate the public about health research, HHS and researchers should disseminate research results to study participants and the public and inform the public about how research is conducted and the value it provides.
"The new framework developed by HHS and other relevant federal agencies should provide strong and effective protection for often-sensitive personally identifiable health information and facilitate scientific discovery and medical innovation necessary to save lives and enhance the quality of the public's health," the report concludes. "And it should do so in a way that does not burden individuals with a flurry of health privacy notices and consent forms, or burden our health care system with a new level of bureaucracy and expense."

HHS, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, American Cancer Society, American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, American Society for Clinical Oncology, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and C-Change supported this study.

Beyond the HIPAA Privacy Rule: Enhancing Privacy, Improving Health Through Research. Published February 4, 2009.

UPDATE: I have been listening to the Obama PR push for the stimulus plan. Based on his total lack of understanding of the issue of electronic health care records I would encourage you to contact your members of Congress and express your concerns after reading some of the articles here that do address the facts.

Obama may think this approach will develop jobs - and it may - but who will pay for it? The consumer will pay in the end through higher health care costs and higher insurance premiums.

The projected savings in health care costs, based on the Obama plan, is ONE PER CENT (1%).

And it does nothing to improve health care delivery. It is a clerical record keeping system. And who will get access to your records.....
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Earlier today I was a guest on the Katherine Albrecht program. For those of you who heard that interview here are some resources for more information -

Who Gets What: Billions for Health Care Insurance

Computerizing Health Care

Medical Billing Codes

Daschle

HIPAA Facts
*** HIPAA Patient Rights Information

CODEX

Alliance for Natural Health

Diet and Lifestyle

American Health Freedom
Doctor-Patient Confidentiality Relationship in Jeopardy.

The economic stimulus bill, as currently written, mandates electronic health records for every citizen WITHOUT providing for an opt-out or patient consent provision starting in 2014.

The House has already passed this egregious bill and the Senate will consider the bill starting Monday.

"Without those protections, Americans’ electronic health records could be shared—without their consent—with over 600,000 covered entities through the forthcoming nationally linked electronic health-records network," says Sue Blevins, Institute for Health Freedom president.

“President Obama has pledged to advance freedom. Therefore the freedom to choose not to participate in a national electronic health-records system must be upheld,” Blevins says. “Unless people have the right to decide if and when their health information is shared or whether to participate in research studies, they don’t have a true right to privacy.”

The bill provides that a nationwide health information database be developed that allows for the electronic use and exchange of information and that facilitates health and clinical research. HIPAA already permits the disclosure of personal health information without patient consent for treatment, payment, and oversight of the healthcare system. The mandate contained in the stimulus bill is yet another attack on the longstanding doctrine of a patient’s right to consent and right to privacy.

Finally, is the stimulus bill even an appropriate vehicle to pass this unrelated matter of developing a nationwide electronic health records database? A patient’s right to privacy should not be taken lightly. Any restriction on a patient’s right to privacy should be open for discussion.

Please write your Senator and President Obama today to express your concern over the ongoing dilution of patient privacy rights. A sample letter is included for your convenience.