(TN) State would seize patients' medical data under new law

[Old Coot]

Tennessean

Tennessee state government wants to get into the healthcare business big time!

There is pending legislation to collect all of the data on your privately paid-for healthcare transactions.

The governor's administration is pushing HB2289. As amended the bill claims that the state government needs your information to:

■Improve the accessibility and affordability of patient health care and health care coverage

■Identify health and health care needs and inform on health and health care policy

■Determine the capacity and distribution of existing health care resources

■Evaluate the effectiveness of intervention programs on improving patient outcomes

■Review costs among various treatment settings, providers, and approaches

■Provide publicly available information on health care providers' quality of care

The plan is to mandate that your insurance company transmit all of your healthcare transactions to the state. You will be assigned a unique, encrypted patient identifier by your insurance company. This identifier will be used by the state to track all of your healthcare transactions so that they can evaluate you according to the criteria listed above. Your doctor will also receive a unique healthcare provider identifier, but he or she will be fully identifiable.

What if you should want to opt-out? Well, you can't. We tried very hard in the House Government Operations Committee this week to make that possible for you and your doctor, but we were defeated on a party-line vote. Should your insurance company refuse to comply with handing over your information, it will receive a $100-per-day fine from the state.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090602/MICRO060304/90602065/State+would+seize+patients%E2%80%99+medical+data+under+new+law++

***************

What about patients paying out of pocket who don't have insurance? I would think the state would need data about these patients in order to have a complete picture.

The article goes on to state that the state estimates the cost of this plan to be about $200,000 per year. It also states that a similar plan in another state costs $3,000,000 per year for analysis only.