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<p>It an issue for both - I don’t know that who it is is a really big issue as a lot of the security issues would be common.</p>
<p>Zoozermom, I don’t think people are afraid to have the gov’t have their personal health records because of fear of hacking - I think they believe that the government will use this information in some nefarious way as a means of controlling it’s citizens in nefarious ways. I am trying to find out what they think will happen to them if the gov’t has that information.</p>
<p>“Yes. But in a database system, you can add additional protection and auditing to non primary key fields.”</p>
<p>So a government database system can do this also, no?</p>
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<p>Not sure where you’re getting your information, but you have it exactly backward. WE are the ones who pay far more for health care than Canada – or anyone else – and have worse outcomes. Yes, it’s true; every other developed country on earth has figured out how to provide coverage for all of their citizens and contain costs at the same time. We alone stubbornly cling to the employment-based model, and insist on the profitability of the private insurance industry over the health of our people. Canada doesn’t have these problems, eh?</p>
<p>My brother works at a large well-known company, and they are requiring their employees to keep track of either their weight or their exercise. The employee gets to choose – how generous! My brother chose the exercise option and was issued a pedometer. He has to report his steps every week; employees who choose the weight option have to report their weekly weigh-ins. He has little doubt that this is the opening salvo in a move to either reduce the coverage for the “slackers”, or increase the amount they have to pay.</p>
<p>What could the government do with our health records? It doesn’t take too much imagination. Aside from an administration in power ‘researching’ the health records of their opponents, it could easily start with the sort of thing people look at as ‘benign’, like reminders to people with certain conditions to get checked, to the really invasive like finding out which young men and women are draft-ready physically. Contagious disease carriers could be flagged and quarantined. </p>
<p>I worry more about the government having access to my medical records than an employer simply because the government has way more power.</p>
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<p>I take it you are planning to forego using Medicare when you turn 65?</p>
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<p>Technically, providers salaries have been dropping for years. It’s about insurance/pharmaceutical/hospital/medical device industries. Their profits are huge and still growing.</p>
<p>There are entire industries built on being the first to access others’ private information.</p>
<p>Well, I guess I will have to. I have little choice in the matter, do I? The difference between the electronic medical records and the payment system of Medicare is that the later is a coding system for office visits and procedures. The former includes things I may have told the doctor in confidence.</p>
<p>Whether you use Medicare or not is independent of whether your doctor uses electronic medical records. (And, of course, Medicare, like any other insurance company, knows from the codes what medical services you are using that are billed to it.)</p>
<p>You do have a choice to self-pay for all of your medical services instead of using Medicare, if you have the necessarily combination of wealth and health.</p>
<p>[Insurers</a> Getting Rich By Not Paying for Care | PR Watch](<a href=“http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/04/10665/insurers-getting-rich-not-paying-care]Insurers”>http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/04/10665/insurers-getting-rich-not-paying-care)</p>
<p>[Report:</a> Health Insurance Profits Rise Despite Health Care Reform - NationalJournal.com](<a href=“http://www.nationaljournal.com/healthcare/report-health-insurance-profits-rise-despite-health-care-reform-20120105]Report:”>http://www.nationaljournal.com/healthcare/report-health-insurance-profits-rise-despite-health-care-reform-20120105)</p>
<p>so many articles …so little time</p>
<p>and a different point of view…</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/health-insurance-premiums-dissected/2011/10/14/gIQAVbnEkL_blog.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/health-insurance-premiums-dissected/2011/10/14/gIQAVbnEkL_blog.html</a></p>
<p>Yes, the codes used show what tests you got, but not the results. That would be in the electronic medical records which would include the patient history, which is where the confidential statements would be.</p>
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<p>Yes. But as I’ve said before, I don’t think that it matters whether it’s employers or the government managing the data. You’re better off if you don’t use the social security number for identification. In general, we’d be better off if organizations generated their own primary keys and kept a separate table of social security numbers that was more heavily protected and audited.</p>
<p>Not using the SS # as a primary key solves the problem of shoulder-surfing too.</p>
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Define “the government.” I see it as a collection of people. I don’t want other people to have access to my private information. I don’t want, for example and no personal offense to you, your husband to be able to access my weight, height, blood results, gynecological history.</p>
<p>“What could the government do with our health records? It doesn’t take too much imagination. Aside from an administration in power ‘researching’ the health records of their opponents, it could easily start with the sort of thing people look at as ‘benign’, like reminders to people with certain conditions to get checked, to the really invasive like finding out which young men and women are draft-ready physically. Contagious disease carriers could be flagged and quarantined.”</p>
<p>Thank you for at least answering my question. These are definitely the types of things I believe some people believe will happen.</p>
<p>"Define “the government.”</p>
<p>Federal, state and local government agencies.</p>
<p>“I don’t want other people to have access to my private information. I don’t want, for example and no personal offense to you, your husband to be able to access my weight, height, blood results, gynecological history.”</p>
<p>So you believe that anyone who works for any government agency will be able to access your personal health records? </p>
<p>I have no response to such paranoia.</p>
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<p>OT: My employer uses employee id to identify us, which is great until someone decided to take this too far. Several years ago they decided that it is a good idea to use this id as an email address instead of firstname.lastname scheme. We thought it was ridiculous and in the protest several of us put our employee id on top of our name tags on our offices. The facilities employees they were not pleased when they could not find anyone. The plan was eventually nixed. I’d like to think that our little protest contributed to the decision.</p>
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<p>The government can’t do anything with anything. The PEOPLE who work for the government can make a lot of mischief and often do.</p>
<p>[AP</a> IMPACT: Past medical testing on humans revealed](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/27/AR2011022700988.html]AP”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/27/AR2011022700988.html)</p>
<p>emilybee,
The reason you have the luxury of labeling others “paranoid” for wanting to limit government access to their private information, is because people like us who care about such things have constructed a system that limits the government’s ability to collect and use it to our detriment. If everyone thought like you, then our government would be a lot more powerful and have a lot more control over our lives than it does now.</p>
<p>You remind me of the people who won’t get their kids vaccinated, because they think the risk of side effects outweighs the risk that their children will ever contract the disease. How do they think we got to the point where they have the luxury of limiting their concerns in that way?</p>
<p>“You remind me of the people who won’t get their kids vaccinated, because they think the risk of side effects outweighs the risk that their children will ever contract the disease. How do they think we got to the point where they have the luxury of limiting their concerns in that way?”</p>
<p>Actually, you all remind me of the people who won’t get their children vaccinated because they don’t want to be told by the government what to do and don’t believe the studies on vaccinations that have been done ad nauseam.</p>