Posted on 04/26/2013 5:55:18 AM PDT by pabianice
(GunNews.com) Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has initiated a rulemaking process to remove unnecessary legal barriers under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule that may prevent states from reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which is the database that houses information on individuals prohibited by law from possessing firearms.
This is one of the 23 executive actions the President announced in January.
Through the public comment process, we will use the data and information provided by states, health providers, patient advocates and others to determine how best to remove unnecessary barriers to NICS reporting while protecting patient privacy, Sebelius said in an April 19 HHS release.
The NICS was created by the Brady Act and ensures that guns are not sold to those prohibited by law from buying them, including felons, those convicted of domestic violence, and individuals involuntarily committed to a mental institution or found to be a danger or unable to manage their affairs due to a mental health condition.
According to a 2012 Government Accountability Office report, 17 states had submitted fewer than 10 records of individuals prohibited for mental health reasons.
The HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) plans to issue an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) to ask for the publics input on how HIPAA may prevent some states from reporting to the NICS and ways in which these barriers can be addressed without discouraging individuals from seeking mental health services.
In order to protect our children and communities, we must ensure that information on potentially dangerous individuals who are prohibited from possessing firearms is available to the background check system, said Secretary Sebelius.
Through the public comment process, we will use the data and information provided by states, health providers, patient advocates and others to determine how best to remove unnecessary barriers to NICS reporting while protecting patient privacy, said OCR Director Leon Rodriguez.
The database that houses non-criminal justice information on individuals prohibited from possessing firearms for reasons related to mental health called the NICS Index does not contain medical or mental health records.
If an individual is prohibited from purchasing a firearm due to specific mental health reasons as set by law, the following information is submitted to the NICS: (1) basic identifying information about the individual such as name, social security number, and date of birth, (2) the name of the state or federal agency that submitted the information, and (3) a notation on which of the ten prohibited categories is applicable to the individual, which allows the individual to appeal and seek to correct incomplete or inaccurate information if needed.
When federally licensed firearms dealers request a NICS background check for a potential buyer, the only information they get back is that the potential buyer is approved, denied, or additional investigation is needed. The dealer does not receive any information about why an individual is denied and does not ever have access to any records of potential buyers, including health records.
The ANPRM will be available for review.
Luckily I don’t need to purchase anymore and neither does anyone in my family.
Now a few will see why the 0bamacare act was really created and voted into law with no one reading it...
It had NOTHING to do with healthcare. Many on the right were well aware of this fact, but as usual the message & warnings fell on deaf ears.
MY GOD ALREADY! WHY CAN WE NOT STOP THEM?
It will be the new catch-22:
If you want a “killing-machine” such as a gun, you are clearly mentally ill and therefore cannot be allowed to purchase one, for your own safety, you see.
If you don’t want a weapon, you are “normal” and sane and can now buy as many as you don’t want.
It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Exactly. They seem to have a real problem understanding "...shall not be infringed." but I'll bet dollars to donuts that they will have no problem understanding "From my cold dead hands."
They still have to take the guns away.
Cleansing justice WILL come.
“My childrens pediatrician asked me this several years ago.”
Mine were asked this (along with other intrusive questions) as part of a pre-appointment survey.
Unless you can get your doctor to agree and PROMISE to not share information with the government which could be used against you, get another doctor.
Come on, after all, we live in a nation where the false right to kill a baby was created using our right to privacy.
If through a right to privacy we can kill babies, then we certainly have a right to prevent the government from knowing what 2nd Amendment protection devices we have in our homes.
It will be much less polite if they tear up the leaflets and try to Watertown a community in a red state.
Because aiming rifles at innocent American citizens, and screaming "OUT! OUT! OUT!" at them like German Nazis won't work where real Americans live.
While simultaneously declaring that ripping your own flesh and blood from your uterus and allowing a butcher to throw it in a toilet or snip its spinal cord as it desperately tries to cling to life is not only normal, it's your 'right'.
Evil doesn't even begin to describe what's in charge.
My favorite doctor appointments are the ones with my podiatrist. He is a firearms afficianado like myself and he has the dough to collect a lot.
Most of our sessions are not about my feet but rather about our personal firearms collections and pieces we'd like to own.
But most of the Chicago deaths are black people, so Ubama doesn't care.
Our mafia connected governor, Cuomo has been working with the Federal Stasi using NY State’s unconstitutional gun law as a test vehicle to find a way to circumvent HIPAA.
Their first attempt failed miserably in Western NY with a gun owner deprived of his guns but then they had to be returned to him. Hopefully a few of our NY State Storm-troopers will be getting some new orange uniforms because of their violation of 1) A constitutional guarantee 2) HIPAA.
Are you one of my patients?!?
:0)
American Psychological Association is virulently anti-gun at the highest levels of the organizations’ structure.
The American Psychological Association can not be allowed to become unelected unaccountable politically motivated doyens who can grant or rip away the natural born rights of men without a equitable system of checks and balances that is not a “pay for justice” stacked judicial kangaroo court system.
The NRA needs to come out in total against ObamaCare, put it all on the line, or they will have in fact surrendered the concept of natural born rights of man to protect one’s self, home family and property.
This is end game moves in the history of our republic.
I highly doubt the schmucks and co-opted high rent charlatans running the NRA and GOP House leadership will give a fight over this.
Nope. But I'll be looking when I finally get out of this Communist Shiite hole called Massachusetts.
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