Clinton Issues New Health Privacy Rules
W A S H I N G T O N, Dec. 20 -- Congress is expected to scrutinize new rules President Clinton issued today that, for the first time,restrict who can see a person’s medical records.
Donna Shalala, secretary of Health and Human Services, predictedlawmakers will find the regulations balanced.
“It gives Americans the power to find out who’s looking intheir records and for what purpose, what’s in their records, how toget them, how to correct errors,” Shalala told reporters.
Even though technology allows personal medical information tobounce from one computer to the next, no federal law protected aperson’s medical privacy.
Clinton said he was doing the most he could do to protectindividual medical records, and urged Congress to pass even moreprotections.
Restricting Easy Access
“With a click of a mouse, your personal health information canbe accessed without your consent by people you don’t know whoaren’t physicians—for reasons that have nothing to do with yourhealth care,” Clinton said.
“It doesn’t take a doctor to understand that is a prescriptionfor abuse. Employers, for instance, shouldn’t see medical records,except for limited reasons, such as to process insurance claims.Yet, too often they do.”
President-elect Bush could undo the rules with a new regulation,but starting the regulatory review process over would be amonumental task.
“Medical privacy is an important issue, but notone that dominated the recent election campaign. It is certainly tobe an issue for public discussion and debate in the future,” RaySullivan, a spokesman for Bush.
Congress also could overturn the regulations, which take effectin about two years.
“They’ll hold hearings early in the new Congress to review theregulations and determine whether they should be added to orchanged,” said Joe Karpinski, a spokesman for the Senate Healthand Education Committee. “They’ll be looking at what did they do?Did the administration have the authority to go as far as theydid?”
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