Here in the USA, your information is protected under what's known as HIPAA - you know, that piece of paper that you sign at the doc's office telling you about your privacy rights. Well, as you already know, American laws can't be enforced after it leaves the border of the USA. When our information leaves this country, there's no protection, no guarantees, no communication - nothing. Those privacty rights you acknowledged END at the border. The kicker is, many times the doctors we use don't even know that the billing company they use may be sub-contracting this work out to India or the Philippines.
Not only is our information not protected by law, thousands are losing their jobs every day. Friend of mine is an expert witness right now for a physician being sued for violations because the biller he chose sent personal, medical & financial information offshore without his knowledge. It's the second doc my friend has had to protect this year. Just yesterday, someone from off-shore contacted me to help market to American-based physicians to get them business. I could charge anything I wanted to the unsuspecting physicians, and get a "cut" and do absolutely nothing else but be the "front". It wasn't the first time I've been approached from off-shore interests, either.
Look, I can share stories about how bad these companies are (some are), how we have to clean up their messes (we do) and how ill-equipped some are to handle complex cases (remember "Peggy"?), and to be fair, I've worked with some fine people from India and the Philippines. This isn't personal or anything but the thing is, it comes down to the loss of very educated, very skilled American workers scrambling for jobs once a hospital or clinic decides to send these jobs out of the USA. It is personal when we lose $60K a year + benefits, like I did, when our jobs are sent overseas. We can't all work at Walmart or the Dollar Stores, right?
You're busy, I'm busy - do you have about 5 minutes to sign this petition? We only have until March 3 to reach 100,000 to get it to President Trump and it's at a dismal 1,200 right now. It's not my petition, but it means a lot - especially since it's my job & countless others you could help save - not to mention protecting our healthcare information from people who aren't bound to our laws.
Thanks in advance, I appreciate all you can do. Here's the link: Stop Offshoring of American Jobs and Prevent Identity Theft by Foreign Companies
signed.
How would you suggest we stop it?
Online petitions are pretty much a waste of time.
They sometimes get reported as sort of a “this looks like a lot of people feel this way” but that is about it.
Online Petitions and hashtags were invented to make weepy Millennials feel like their opinion matters.
Scenario. Trump abolishes H1B visas entirely. Global corporations retaliate by moving jobs overseas. Trump retaliates by outlawing the transmission of HIPAA-protected personal information outside of US jurisdiction, even temporarily for processing.