Re: Rewarding the sharks

[Robert Gellman <rgellman@cais.cais.com>]

On Tue, 21 Nov 1995 AGENTLE@aol.com wrote:

> Bob:
> 
> Your explanation about limiting disclosure of a health trustee to the minimum
> amount of data relevant to a claim is only a half truth. The reality is,
> auto, disability, workers comp, and other insurers are increasing declining
> ALL claims, including legitimate ones, forcing the insureds to take the
> matter to court; this AUTOMATICALLY forces ANY and ALL records into
> consideration, thereby negating what you said about minimizing disclosure.
> This only rewards the sharks and predators that WANT TO USE PATIENT RECORDS
> AGAINST PATIENTS DELIBERATELY, (FOR INSTANCE READING ONE'S SEX LIFE, OR
> CHILDHOOD PROBLEMS OUT LOUD IN COURT, AS A DEFENSE FOR A RECKLESS DRIVER, and
> to humiliate the claimant out of their claim)

Excuse me, but when you get to court, you have to ability to ask the 
court to restrict the scope of discovery.  The House bill has a procedure 
that give you notice of a subpoena for your medical records and an 
opportunity to contest the scope of the subpoena.  You can also get a 
protective order preventing the records from being misused.  I don't know 
anything about claims being denied, but when you and the other side are 
already in court, you have every ability to protect your own rights.  All 
necessary tools exist, and you have an independent decision maker.  In 
any event, this represents only a tiny fraction of requests for records.

If insurance companies are denying claims unreasonably, that is not the 
fault of privacy legislation.  

Bob

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