Big Brother Will See You NowThat's just swell. What ever happened to HIPA? Fuck that. They're the government looking out for your interests. They're exempt from guaranteeing your privacy.
Public health gets too personal.
By Elizabeth M. Whelan
Earlier this year in New York City, a public-heath regulation went into effect that set a new and very troublesome precedent, one that insinuates government agencies into personal medical matters.
In mid-January, the city began legally requiring laboratories that do medical testing to report to the Health Department the results of blood-sugar tests for city residents with diabetes — along with the names, ages, and contact information on those patients.
City officials are not only analyzing these data to assess patterns and changes in diabetes prevalence in the city, but are planning "interventions." Simply put, diabetics will soon receive letters and phone calls from city officials offering advice and counsel on how to effectively deal with their medical condition. If you wish to keep your medical data confidential, you cannot. If you want to avoid the "interventions," you can go online and fill out forms requesting that you not be contacted — that is, if you even know the program exists, and you have the sophistication and technology to access the government’s "do not contact" forms. (None of the New York City newspapers have done any in-depth coverage of this new regulation and its implications.)
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Supposedly, there's an 'opt out' form you can fill out, but then you are pretty much admitting you have a problem, and they can leter say you refused their "help", so you are now not deserving of their aid.
Sweet.
But wait a minute. That's New York isn't it? Where Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton is running the show?
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