Re: Alan Lewis on Bob Gellman and me

[James Brady <jbrady@freenet.columbus.oh.us>]

Date: Sun, 26 Nov 1995 17:45:46 -0500
From: ahlewis@scsn.net
To: Multiple recipients of list <med-privacy@essential.org>
Subject: Re: Bob Gellman and me

In a post of Tues, 21 Nov., Bob Gellman wrote:

"Now let's guess who will refuse to make their records available.  
Those who are committing fraud or those who are not? "

Then Alan Lewis posted at 1746 on 26.nv.95:
How can an American citizen say a thing like that?  People might 
well refuse to make their records available because their records 
are none of anyone else's (legitimate) damn business.

I believe Bob may have been typing about fraud situations where one must
have access to the medical record to document the claim.  I went to the
doctor once with chest pain ... forgot what it was, but I was not
disabled.  Had I filed a claim for disability due to heart trouble, the
company idemnifying my disability needs access to my medical record to
properly act on the claim.  Same is true if preexisting conditons are
ridered out,  company needs access to records for health conditon prior to
issue or prior to claim.  If you know of a company that does NOT
investigate disablity or death claims, for God's sake, let me know.  I
have a good use for the money I can get. 


Privacy is a basic human, and especially American, right.  Cost 
containment, even if it depended on discarding privacy (the essence 
of Gellman's position) is surely not worth it!

Gellman also wrote: 

"Medical records are not actually less private than your bank records,
school records, and criminal history records.  You don't have to like
this.  I don't.  But you can't pass legislation that prevents cost
containment and research.  And some or much of it requires identifiable
records.  You can have privacy or cost containment, but you may not be
able to have both.  I am sorry about that.  I don't like it any more than
you do.  But a bill that gets a multi-billion dollar price tag cannot
pass."

Why?  Others do.  Is Gellman saying we cannot have privacy because 
it costs the corporate interests too much?  Run that by me again.

I'm not sure what is being claimed.  Most custodians guard medical records
with scrupulous care.  There are a few examples of outrage ... those
examples need to be handled with sufficient severity to motivate folks not
to do act outrageously (not necessarily law suits, either). 

James D Brady typing for James D Brady and no one else.
jbrady@freenet.columbus.oh.us