WE USED TO BE ABLE TO TRUST OUR DOCTORS

Submitted by: P McMILLAN

The Strange Laws That Dictate What Your Doctor Tells You

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States are increasingly passing measures that force doctors to give patients incomplete or wrong information. Here’s how that happens.

(AP Photo/David Goldman)

Across the country, states are passing laws that determine what doctors can and cannot discuss with their patients, according to a new report from a coalition of four nonprofit organizations. Doctors might be prevented from asking patients about politically sensitive topics, like guns or fracking, or they might be forced to give patients medically inaccurate information, in the case of abortion. [ Read complete article]
This entry was posted in To Health With You on October 19, 2015.


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http://thejacksonpress.org/?p=40237

No, Your Medical Records Are Not Private

Many Americans think the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects their medical privacy, but federal bureaucrats issue thousands of subpoenas every year without prior judicial approval to get around the law.

“If you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy against government in your medical care, then where does it exist at all? If that’s not private, then what is?” Adam Bates, a criminal justice policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Congress passed HIPAA in 1996 with a promise that it would clamp down on waste, fraud and abuse in the health care industry and safeguard patient privacy. But HIPAA allows federal bureaucrats to get patient records merely by issuing administrative subpoenas, or civil investigative demands.

These bureaucratic edicts bypass the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that a judge must give prior approval before government can search or take an individual’s property. Officials with the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Inspector General and the Department of Justice (DOJ) thus have access to any records they believe to be “ relevant” in cases of alleged health care fraud.

“The subpoenas are so broad that they almost always will include patient records,” David Douglass, a partner at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton law firm which represents health care providers also told TheDCNF.

The DOJ issued 2,102 administrative subpoenas in 2001 over suspected health care offenses, according to a 2002 DOJ report. That doesn’t include subpoenas issued by other agencies, like the HHS IG. Nobody knows how many administrative subpoenas are issued annually now because the 2002 report was the last time an official count was done.

But lawyers representing medical care providers constantly deal with administrative subpoenas.

“I do think it raises constitutional challenges,” said Robert Rhoad to TheDCNF. Rhoad is a former Navy JAG Corps lawyer who’s now a partner at Crowell & Moring law firm.

Federal officials in most cases can also share records, including patient records, with whistleblowers, called relators, and their lawyers, whether or not the government ultimately decides to pursue criminal charges or a civil lawsuit.

“Everybody’s got horror stories for what happens when the relators get into their stuff,” said Jonathan Diesenhaus, a former DOJ senior trial lawyer who now represents health care companies as a partner with the Hogan Lovells law firm, to TheDCNF. “It becomes an avenue for abuse.”

Congress passed HIPAA amid reports of increasing Medicare fraud, but the legislation also provided for first time ever specific authorization for judgeless administrative subpoenas to be used in criminal law enforcement pursuits.

“Mentioning privacy, the Justice Department can get medical records, patient bills,” Diesenhaus said. “Just like an administrative subpoena, these civil investigative demands fall into the federal program oversight exception to the HIPAA statue.”

“So, patient records protections that apply and require courts to say ‘yes, you can look at those records’ in other contexts, and that imposed significant penalties for even government people who released them, those rules don’t apply with the IG or if the Department of Justice asks for patient records,” Diesenhaus said.

Federal officials use patient records to determine whether a health care provider, drug company or patient gamed the system, “and there is no judicial oversight,” Diesenhaus said.

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