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Your privacy is eroding fast. Being online, you wonder, “How did they know that?” It’s hard to act anonymously today if anyone makes an effort to find out who you are. Society has given the health industry the tools and even laws to control the use of your data and to spread this data.
You live like a celebrity: your movements, your weight gain, your surgeries, your medications, your medical tests, and your sexual history are all monitored. Questions are now asked about why you had surgery, who is your doctor, why are you talking Viagra, and what medicines are you taking.
Is there any harm in disclosing your personal information? When you give your social security number to someone is it an intrusion on your privacy? Are you denied any service, can fraud occur, can your identity be stolen, are you injured when some one else knows something personal about you?
PRIVACY VERSUS SECURITY
Security is a public issue that now poses as a privacy issue. The promise of safety from terrorism leads you to give private information that promises you safety and security; this tractable data allows our government to monitor your activities.
How can you, however, preserve your freedom and still let individuals, and institutions have tractable data? If medical information is misused, it is an issue of security not a breach of privacy.
PRIVACY VERSUS MEDICAL CARE
Personalized medicine is almost a reality. Electronic record keeping has begun. Detailed health and generic information is obtained from your private medical history. Drug companies collect private data to target their ads to you. Insurance companies may soon require you to take genetic tests that will result in denied insurance if you have a genetic risk.
You can certainly be discriminated when genetic studies are performed on you. A genome carries a lot of information and can uniquely identify anyone. Your family relationships that were hidden now can be exposed. Genes, however, don’t tell about what you have done to improve your inherited abilities. Your upbringing, behavior, and environment all interact with your genes and this is not considered. Soon genetic discrimination may be against the law. May 2008 Pres. Bush signed a law called GINA (GeneticInformatinNondiscrimination Act) which outlaws discrimination in insurance and employment based on genetic tests. Will it be enforceable?: only time will tell.
With the flood of medical and genetic information, health insurance has learned a great deal about all of us. With accurate predictions now easier, diseases and treatments are tracked better to determine who is a high medical risk.
HEALTH CARE COSTS
Will our society mandate subsidies be given to make insurance more affordable to you? What kind of discrimination is ok and what is not? If insurance companies are given the administration duties, will they want clear rules about their health costs? Will Insurance companies be willing to pay for these services? Will they then quit digging through your personal medical records to deny you coverage? The bottom line is: How can quality medical care be made available and medical costs still be kept down without limiting your medical care?
The government has now unlimited power to collect and use or misuse our personal data. It can pass rules to protect your privacy, but will they observe or enforce the rules they make? What we do need are rules that will limit how much of our privacy is actually needed by our government.
You probably would not mind giving out your personal information if it would help our general social welfare-- and-- the truth about your health does not result in more costly medical bills and higher insurance premiums.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
THE MEDIA has always protected your rights. Now the Internet has given you tools and a platform to take things in your own hands. You have an instant access to a potentially worldwide audience. Around the globe there is social networking, and sharing of cell phones and messages.
Networking, blogging, and tweeting on face book and other web sites gives you a lot of pleasure in sharing your personal information with others on a social networking level. It is another way your voice can also be heard about medical affairs.
CONCLUSIONS
Privacy is not a one size fits all situations; data is accumulated and put in marketing buckets. Sometimes you really are concerned about who gets your personal information and what happens to it. Many times you don’t have the right to control a government entity, your employer, your insurance company, or your doctor from getting personal information.
You, however, have some bargaining positions as you gain the tools and knowledge to protect yourself. You must demand the same kind of information from the government that government demands from businesses and from you. Disclosure rules are tightened all the time on labor practices, financial results and everything a business does. Can’t we also get that same information about our government?
As an investor, you have the right to have information about the company you own, about the products made and how they are made.
Tell us Uncle Sam about your job related behavior, since we elected you and pay your salary. Tell us about your conflicts of interest and what you do with your (our) time. We want the same rights as patients that shareholders and customers have. Perhaps we should have extra rights, since we are coerced into giving you so much data and have become so transparent. Help us monitor, through our representatives, what you do Uncle Sam with our personal data. Let us audit how you manage and keep our data secure.
You must show your credit worthiness by giving private information to a company if you wish to purchase anything. If they ask for too much data you can refuse to do business with them. You also have a right to know what companies do with your data, and if you don’t like it you can move on. Laws must be enforced to make companies actually follow their disclosed practices. You also have the right to information to check out your doctors and hospitals.
Team Obama’s quest for transparency doesn’t make things simple. Your lives and medical affairs are as complicated as anyone cares to uncover. Ambiguity exists in novels, history, political campaigns, compliments, divorces, lawsuits, and invitations to golf—and-- to your medical history.
Silicone and hospital software will not make this ambiguity disappear. In the past, what you did in private didn’t travel far from your doctor’s office, unless you were famous. Now the concept of privacy is changing. Unlike your parents, today you live a life in public, and can be hurt by erroneous information.
Visit www.drneedles.com for more commentaries on current controversial medical subjects. Your comments are always appreciated.
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