Obama’s Electronic Health Records initiative could usher in a new wave of ID theft

With the stimulus bill all but signed it looks like the government will be handing out $19 billion in an effort to digitize America’s health record system. The problem is we have a noble goal but no plan or direction on how it should be accomplished. The stated goal, which has garnered substantial support, is to build a National Electronic Health Records (EHR) system. But the plan or direction on how to get us there is completely missing from the stimulus bill. When the government throws lots of money at a problem before they have a viable plan or even the framework of a plan in place disaster usually strikes. Reference the recent Tarp disaster for proof. Given the current stimulus bill’s ambiguity it looks like we are destined for yet another misuse of funds, this time with modernizing healthcare.

Modernizing America’s health record system is not a new undertaking by government it just has a new advocate, President Obama, willing to take up the fight for it. President Bush was the first to start down this path when he formed the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in 2004. Unfortunately, the new office was never given the funds or support that it desperately needed to accomplish its goal. Its goal was, and still is, to create an electronic health record for every American by 2014. Given that this goal was announced 5 years ago and only has 5 more years to go one would assume it should be about halfway-accomplished right? Ah…not exactly. Reality is we really haven’t even started yet. Up to now it is mostly window dressing and press releases.

And since we are starting basically from scratch here there are a few things that stand out as problems with the current stimulus bill as it relates to EHR.

The first one is the Institute for Health Freedom (IHF) is warning the public that the economic stimulus bill mandates the federal government to plan for each American to use "an" electronic health record (EHR) by 2014 -- without opt-out or patient-consent provisions. This is a very serious breach of privacy and one I would hope will be overturned with time. Seems as though the government decided to not come up with a comprehensive plan but instead made sure that no matter what it is everyone will have to be a part of it. This would open up your complete medical records to over 600,000 healthcare providers, payment processors, and government health agencies without your consent. An no, HIPAA will not protect you from this. This kind of pervasive access to anyone’s health records screams of privacy and security concerns.

Ok, so maybe your thinking that this is not so bad because it is for the greater good, just needs to be done, and we can trust the government to protect our security and privacy.

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