***News Release***
Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom:
HIPAA Is the ‘Biggest Breach of All’
After Anthem Ordered to Pay Millions for Patient Privacy Breach, CCHF Says Privacy is Breached Every Day Through HIPAA and Electronic Health Records; New Book Exposing HIPAA and EHRs in Second Printing
PAUL, Minn.—Anthem’s massive 2015 cyberattack is costing the nation’s second-largest health insurer a record $16 million. That’s the equally massive amount the company will pay to settle any potential privacy violations in the biggest known health care hack in U.S. history, the Chicago Sun Times reported last week.
Albeit the largest hack—which put 79 million patients’ private medical information, along with their names, birthday and Social Security numbers at risk—it was not the first. And it certainly won’t be the last, says Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF).
That’s because the biggest breach of all—bigger than any health care hack in the past or any that will happen in the future—is the permissive Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), coupled with the push for physicians and hospitals to use government-designed electronic health records (EHRs).
“The mandate to digitize medical records is causing massive breaches like these,” said CCHF co-founder and president Twila Brase. “But HIPAA is the biggest breach of all. It’s the ongoing daily breach authorized by Congress that no one talks about. HIPAA is a ‘permissive’ data-sharing rule—and one of the largest policy deceptions ever foisted on the American people. Under the federal HIPAA regulation, and enabled by the EHR mandate, the federal government has authorized more than 700,000 clinics, hospitals, insurers and data processing companies, along with their 1.5 million business associates plus government agencies to dig deep into the private lives of more than 320 million Americans. And for the most part, patients won’t even be allowed to know who’s doing the digging. Every time the so-called HIPAA ‘privacy’ form is slid across the counter for a signature, the privacy deception is strengthened. And each time a doctor clicks an EHR box in the exam room, the data collection system grows.”
In August, CCHF shared “22 HIPAA Harms” for the 22nd anniversary of HIPPA, which alerted Americans how HIPAA doesn’t protect patient privacy at all.
More, however, are learning about the HIPAA deception and how their medical privacy is compromised through Brase’s new book, “Big Brother in the Exam Room: The Dangerous Truth About Electronic Health Records,” published this summer by Beaver’s Pond Press.
The book, already in its second printing with hundreds of backorders logged, exposes how and why Congress forced doctors and hospitals to install a data-collecting, command-and-control surveillance system in the exam room. “Big Brother in the Exam Room” also shines light on this HIPAA deception and includes the negative impact of EHRs on privacy, personalized care, costs, patient safety and more, according to doctors and data from more than 125 studies. Learn more at www.BigBrotherInTheExamRoom.com.
A few of the five-star reviews for “Big Brother in the Exam Room” include the following:
- “This is at once a most erudite and easily readable book on what’s happened to medicine after government began favoring managed care to ration unlimited demand for services following congressional passage of tax-subsidized insurance for 85% of the population in 1965. This was a point in time after which it appeared cheaper to pay for care with tax-subsidized dollars than with money. When insurance hid the real price of care, it appeared ‘free’ Unrelenting cost inflation resulted for the first time in over 80 years. Decades of rationing care to control cost inflation have not worked yet we are saddled with massive crony (government backed) corporate cartels empowered to ration care with mandated electronic ‘efficiency’ and Big Data mining. Medicine has been decimated and cost inflation continues thanks to political malpractice.”
- “Twila’s book exposes the lies and the bill of goods citizens were sold when (HIPAA) became law. (HIPAA) was sold as a privacy law when in fact, it is just the opposite. There is no privacy. Patient Rights (pre-HIPAA) have diminished. Obamacare has further eroded the wall of privacy a patient should have with a physician. Medical data is being accessed, shared, and used for research without the patient’s consent. Only Congress can take medicine back to a time when permission was needed for everyone to access a patient’s medical record. There is a volume of information in this book that everyone should read.”
- “This book is outstanding! Twila has done a fantastic job of showing how the growth of data collection can affect the freedom of all Americans. I appreciated how she outlined the steps back to freedom. This is a must read for all Americans who are impacted more than we know by the health care system today.”
For more information about CCHF, visit www.cchfreedom.org, its Facebook page or its Twitter feed @CCHFreedom. Read more about “Big Brother in the Exam Room” here, and view the media page for CCHF here. For more about CCHF’s free-market, cash-based care initiative, The Wedge of Health Freedom, visit www.JointheWedge.com, The Wedge Facebook page or follow The Wedge on Twitter @wedgeoffreedom.
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