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DEL.ICIO.USSharing health records
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One component of plans to institute a national electronic medical records system is the ability to share health information among providers and researchers.
What would motivate consumers to open their health records?
Money, of course.
Forrester Research is out with a new study that says 47 percent of consumers would allow their medical records to be shared among providers and researchers if it meant lower insurance premiums for them.
The study doesn’t seem to differentiate between sharing identifiable data among health care providers and sharing anonymous data with health researchers, as many plans call for. Regardless, less than half of those willing to share their records say they believe current health privacy laws are sufficient to protect personal information.
What do you think? Would you be willing to let researchers use your health records to look for public health trends or conduct studies if it saved you money on health insurance?
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By MrLiberty
January 10, 2007 1:56 PM | Link to this
This question is like asking “would you be willing to pay more money in taxes if it meant betters schools?” (or better roads, police, fire, or any other government service.) It is a trick question. In the same manner that more money will never provide better government services, giving up personal privacy will not result in lower premiums. What it will result in is the blacklisting of likely hundreds of thousands of individuals either because of past medical treatments, psychological treatment, drug rehab, or past lab test results that were meant to be kept secret.
Our current system of third party payer insurance, Medicare, HMO’s, and the like, along with the massive intrusion of government regulations and professional licensure laws is why medicine costs so much in the first place. Don’t be conned into thinking that government or the insurance companies are ever going to be the solution. Only a truly free market in medical care, alternative medicine, and unrestricted access to beneficial pharmaceuticals of all types will answer our country’s woes.
Unfortunately americans have become too soft and too weak willed to reject either the current system or the total socialistic proposals soon too come. They regard liberty and freedom as some sort of bad medicine that must be rejected outright despite the fact that affordable medical care was readily available in this country as recently as the 1950’s (when some semblance of freedom still existed and before the government really got its hooks in).
By Tom
January 10, 2007 4:54 PM | Link to this
There is a move afoot in Ontario Canada to have a universal OHIP data base allowing pharmacies access to your medical records. There are no assurances anywhere that make me feel comforatable about security. How is access to anyones medical records kept secure in the senario you decribe or the one I mention? Sharing information to control costs. be they taxes or premiums is a good thing, however, I feel that with present technology, security can easily be breached and the information used in a detremental way. (please excuse the spelling. I have become a WORD checker handicapped person)