By: Mary Mostert, Analyst,
Back in the early 1970s when Roe Vs Wade was wending it way up the judicial ladder to the Supreme Court the great debate centered around a woman's right to privacy - when she wanted to have an abortion to get rid of an unwanted baby.
Sure enough, to the surprise of the entire nation at the time, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion, which was illegal in every state and considered a heinous crime by most people, was to be allowed, at least in the early stages of the pregnancy, as an unlimited "right." Roe Vs Wade and later abortion decisions greatly expanded the notion of "privacy" to be so pervasive as to supercede the right of the father of a child to stop the mother from eliminating his child. The Supreme Court in Roe Vs Wade said "the right to privacy" is a "fundamental human right."
So, how come we woke up this past few days to the news that a law passed in 1996 allows the government to have access to our medical records? While the average person affected by the law is just finding out, the medical profession has known about this for quite awhile - and they don't like it any better than most of us do. But, who listens to doctors anyway?
In September 1997 Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala released recommendations that were supposed to "protect patients' medical records from widespread public access and misuse."
Pardon me? The GOVERNMENT is going to protect us from "widespread public access and misuse" of our medical records? This is like asking the fox to guard the hen house.
Healthcare groups and privacy advocates objected to the provision that gives federal and state law enforcement officials "virtually unlimited access to medical records-without patient authorization."
Shalala's recommendations proposed limiting access to medical records by employers, researchers, drug manufacturers, and direct-marketing firms, among others. It would establish civil and criminal penalties for misuse of the records. Supposedly the 1996 law that increased Americans' access to health insurance requires the recommendations.
The Department of Health and Human Services maintains that law enforcement officials "need ready access to medical records to crack down on fraud in the trillion-dollar healthcare industry." Under the recommendations, law enforcement agencies would not need to obtain court orders or notify patients before seeking medical records. Shalala's goal is to establish national standards for medical record protection, "with clear guidance and significant incentives for the fair treatment of personal information."
Apparently lost in discussion, and unreported by the media, is the fact that, while talking about "reducing" government and "re-inventing" government, what is occurring is an almost complete government usurpation of citizen "privacy" rights. Those rights are not merely the right to obtain an abortion. They have been expanded to permit almost unlimited personal decision making
Remember the story last week about an abortionist in Oregon who started a partial birth abortion, fracturing the baby's head and then changed his mind and delivered a live 6 pound 2 ounce baby girl? The AP reported that he believed the baby to be at about 23 weeks - which would have been about a two pound baby. The first story said that no arrests were planned because nothing illegal had occurred.
Well, today there is a sequel to that story. The Arizona Board of Medical Examiners voted unanimously on Monday to suspend John Biskind's medical license on the grounds that he "tried to abort a teenager's full-term baby last month and of allowing a woman to bleed to death in April."
It seems that the abortion in April left the woman with a ruptured uterus "caused by a medical instrument" and she died.
So much for the arguments we have been hearing ad nauseum from a group of women in Congress that abortions performed on young girls are so "safe" and so much their "right" that parental notification is an affront and not needed.
Edward Sattenspiel, a board member, observed that "It is impossible to believe" that Biskind could not tell that the 17-year-old girl was 37 weeks pregnant instead of the claimed 23 weeks. The baby survived the June 30 abortion attempt with a fractured skull and lacerations.
"Dr. Biskind is incompetent to tell a woman in the middle of her pregnancy from a woman in the end of her pregnancy," Sattenspiel said. "Anybody that does this should not have the right to practice medicine."
So, what do we have here? Performing abortions are so protected by the Supreme Court's rendition of the "right to privacy" that Biskind can't even be arrested for attempted murder. However, all the rest of use have so little right to privacy that the Federal Government has unlimited authority to have our medical records? And we are supposed to feel safer for it?
First the Clinton Administration got their hands on hundreds of FBI files and has been using them to good advantage in the propaganda war - as we see from what they tried to do with Linda Tripp. Now they are going to have the power to decide that we have to go into HMOs, we have to allow the government to have access to our medical records - surely the personal records that most people feel the most private of all - and Shalala thinks we won't mind at all if they discourage their use by people who want to sell us the latest medications?
All this is supposed to reduce the cost of medicine. The best way to bring down the cost of medical care would be to get the government completely out of the business. It is the government's incredibly stupid rules and regulations that have caused the price rises in the first place.
To comment: mmostert@waveshift.com