Free Republic

The age of mask and vaccine mandates has sparked important conversations about what employers, businesses and our government can ask about our personal health decisions. These discussions often reveal widespread misconceptions about who is responsible for keeping that information confidential and secure. Clarity on this issue is of utmost importance for consumers, especially with the rise of smartphone apps hungry for health data. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 created national standards for protecting individuals’ health information. Many people assume the law applies to any entity that might request or handle health information. In fact, the...

Yet another Southwest Airlines Whistleblower has came forward to The DC Patriot in less than 24 hours, this time with internal documents and forms of the companies insane exemption policies. According to the Southwest employee, regardless of what you do, it’s very rare for an exemption to be accepted. They even went as far as to explain to us there’s an online procedure where you have no choice but to check a box giving Southwest Airlines permission to talk to your healthcare provider. A complete and total violation of HIPPA. This is truly unbelievable. That a company expects you to...

The Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office for Civil Rights issued guidance today explaining that COVID-19 vaccine status would not be covered under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rules. Within its new guidance, HHS reminded that HIPAA does not apply to employer or employment records on the grounds that the rules only apply to HIPAA-covered entities like health care providers conducting electronic transactions.

As more people get their COVID-19 shots, many are finding themselves in a position of having to ask others about their vaccination status. Some are wondering if this violates the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. Ellen Cihak has not been asked if she is vaccinated against the coronavirus. She also hasn't been asked to show proof in Appleton stores. "I would like to see that happen. I don't know if it's legal to do that," said Cihak. Like many others, Cihak doesn't know if the question violates HIPAA. John Fisher is a health care attorney who specializes...

Can the learned Freepers explain to me why it becomes anyone's business whether or not an individual has had the Covid vaccine. Certainly, this should be an individual's choice like every healthcare choice. Why is is not a HIPPA violation for anyone, employers, airlines, cruise lines etc to demand to see proof of vaccination (which is in essence a medical record?)

So I work for my local county (Upstate NY) and the new county administrator put out the edict as of tomorrow, if you are "fully vaccinated" (TM) then you don't have to wear a mask. All others do need to wear a mask on the job and social distance. Violators will be "disciplined" WWYD?

Houston woman let go from her job as a nurse after refusing to get COVID-19 vaccine.. FOX 26 Reporter Maria Salazar spoke with the woman who claimed she was also silenced and harassed. A Houston-area woman says she was a nurse at Houston Methodist for about 10 years until this week. "I knew that the date was looming over my head of me to get the vaccine and we were constantly being pressured and pressured," Michelle Fuentes told FOX 26. On April 1, Houston Methodist announced it would require employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine by June 7. However, the...

President Donald J. Trump was sicker with Covid-19 in October than publicly acknowledged at the time, with extremely depressed blood oxygen levels at one point and a lung problem associated with pneumonia caused by the coronavirus, according to four people familiar with his condition. His prognosis became so worrisome before he was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that officials believed he would need to be put on a ventilator, two of the people familiar with his condition said. The people familiar with Mr. Trump’s health said he was found to have lung infiltrates, which occur when the...

Today, Governor John Bel Edwards and the Louisiana Department of Health outlined a plan for COVID-19 testing and tracking that would hire as many as 700 Louisianans to serve as “contact tracers,” interviewing and advising people who have tested positive to determine who in their lives could also be at risk. This week, LDH signed a contract with Accenture and Salesforce to manage Louisiana’s contact tracing process, using two Louisiana-based call centers with 100 percent Louisiana agents. The training for these contact tracers will be managed by LSU’s Stephenson Disaster Management Institute. While hiring will be statewide the initial locations...

Kudos to Margaret Brennan of CBS for asking Adam Schiff on Sunday about his release of phone logs of his political opponents. Mr. Schiff dismissed any criticism, and his reason is revealing about the balance of power in Washington. “The blowback has only come from the far right,” Mr. Schiff said. “But look, every investigator seeks phone records to corroborate, sometimes to contradict, a witness’s testimony.” Yes, but executive-branch investigators who want to get data from private telecom companies typically must obtain some kind of judicial order. Mr. Schiff did it himself. Prosecutors are also supposed to limit the release...

The consequences deriving from the allegedly false hate crime report of Jussie Smollett are vast. The expression "collateral damage" is appropriate. Whatever his fate, now that he was written out of his part on a TV show and indicted for 16 felony counts related to his allegedly false reporting of a hate crime, dozens of other people are suffering career catastrophes derived from the scandal's aftermath. At least 50 employees may have been fired from Northwestern Memorial Hospital for accessing the medical profile and records of "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett without authorization, sources with knowledge of the situation said. One...

Nearly four years before school shooter Nikolas Cruz gunned down 17 students and educators at a Parkland high school, he confided in a therapist that he saw himself in a dream drenched in human blood. A May 3, 2014, notation in a Broward County schools psychiatric file said Cruz “reported [a dream] last week of him killing people and covered in blood. He smiled and told the therapist that sometimes he says things for shock value.” After Cruz’s disclosure to his therapist at the alternative Cross Creek School, administrators developed a “safety plan” to ensure the welfare of Cruz and...

NBC News has a new article about Donald Trump’s doctor of 35 years, Dr. Harold Bornstein—the guy who claimed that Trump, if elected, would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” The dude looks like a character from a bad 70s porno flick, but Deadspin’s Tim Burke spotted something weirder: Dr. Bornstein is using Windows XP. Why does it matter if Dr. Bornstein is using an outdated operating system? Well, it could be a violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP back in 2014 and HIPAA requires doctors to make...

Healthcare.gov, the federal website where you sign up for Obamacare, is quietly sharing your personal information with private companies. The evidence is in the computer code on the website itself. It shows that Healthcare.gov is relaying certain information, such as your zip code, income level, pregnancy status and whether or not you smoke. That information is being shared with several third parties. DoubleClick is a Google (GOOG) subsidiary that serves up advertisements and tracks your movements online. Healthcare.gov also shares your data with Google, Twitter (TWTR, Tech30), Yahoo (YHOO, Tech30), YouTube and others. "People's private medical data should not be...

According to two new studies published Wednesday by the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), U.S. physicians and hospitals are rapidly increasing the use of electronic health records (EHRs). The two studies found that in 2013: •Nearly 78 percent of office-based physicians acknowledged they had implemented some form of EHR system. •About half of all physicians had an EHR system with advanced functionalities, nearly double the rate of four years before. •About 59 percent of hospitals had an EHR system with advanced functionalities, nearly quadruple the rate of two years before. The HHS claims that...

Over the past 2 decades, Republican and Democrat Administrations have joined forces to require the use by physicians and hospitals of government-certified, interoperable electronic medical records systems, or EMRs. These online record keeping systems will send personal patient information collected by all participating providers directly to the centralized Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, a newly created government agency whose job is making the medical records of the American people “inter-operable–” that is, instantly accessible to any “qualified” agency or agent. For example, if the patient of a New Jersey physician should become the victim of a...

President Obama continues to miss the mark. Federal law already prohibits insurance companies from cancelling policies, and his “fix” is a flop. Millions of insurance policies are being cancelled throughout the country, as reports confirm. Democrats were aware this would happen under the new Obamacare law. However, these millions of insurance policies should never have been cancelled. Federal law prohibits their cancellation. In an interview with The Washington Times, C. Steven Tucker, a health insurance and Obamacare expert in Illinois, explains that the HIPAA law section 2742 (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) does not permit these insurance...

he Internal Revenue Service is now facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges. According to a report by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed HIPAA-covered entity in California is suing the IRS, alleging that some 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by 15 IRS agents. The personal health information seized on March 11, 2011, included psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data. "This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Blocked by Congress from expanding gun sale background checks, President Barack Obama is turning to actions within his own power to keep people from buying a gun who are prohibited for mental health reasons.

They can’t pass gun control via Congress so they’re going the dictator route. This is not going to go over well. On a conference call with “stakeholders,” Biden told gun control advocates that the fight is not over and that eventual action on gun control will come. Press were not invited to the conference call; a participant provided BuzzFeed with access. “Look I know you’re going to say that I’m just being an optimist and I’m trying to put a good face on this. But you know I’ve been around here a long time and we’ve already done, because of...