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WASHINGTON -- The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons issued the following statement by it General Counsel, Andrew Schlafly, in reaction to the decision issued today by the District Court of Appeals, Fourth District, Florida, in the matter of Rush Limbaugh v. the State of Florida regarding the release of his medical records. The AAPS filed an amicus curiae brief in that case. "It's open season now on everyone's medical records and everyone in the country needs to start playing hide and seek with their doctor following today's ruling by District Court of Appeals in the matter of rush Limbaugh's...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - A decision by a Florida court Wednesday, which threw out a conviction because the state illegally obtained a defendant's medical records, provides powerful new ammunition for Rush Limbaugh's lawyers. The radio host has said in a court filing that his medical records were also illegally seized and therefore may not be used against him. Roy Black, Limbaugh's attorney, immediately filed a notice informing the 4th District Court of Appeals of this new decision by another Florida court. Black has said the Palm Beach County state's attorney improperly obtained Limbaugh's medical records. The prosecutor claims that...

NEW YORK - Dr. Robert Atkins, whose popular diet stresses protein-rich meat and cheese over carbohydrates, weighed 258 pounds at his death and had a history of heart disease, a newspaper reported Tuesday. Atkins died last April at age 72 after being injured in a fall on an icy street. Before his death, he had suffered a heart attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a report by the city medical examiner. At 258 pounds, the 6-foot-tall Atkins would have qualified as obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web...

EAGLE, Colo. - Investigators who questioned Kobe Bryant after he allegedly assaulted a 19-year-old hotel worker are being put on the defensive as the NBA star's lawyers seek to have key evidence thrown out.

NEW YORK (AP) Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to focus this year on improving health care, beginning with a proposal designed to modernize the sharing of medical information nationwide. The senator, who as first lady presided over a failed effort at health care overhaul, told a gathering of about 100 New York City health care leaders at a Manhattan hospital on Monday that the current system "often seems fragmented, redundant, inefficient and bureaucratic." "Americans need a new, modern, 21st-century version of health care delivery, based on the premise of information in the hands of the right people at the right...

HIPAA, the stringent new federal medical-privacy law, took effect in April, and soon had what may be some rather drastic unintended consequences in the town of Craig, Colo.: "To protect the privacy of those needing medical help, 911 dispatchers stopped mentioning residents' names in radio calls to emergency response teams. That made it more difficult for the teams to find addresses," which critics charge may have contributed to the death of a local heart attack victim. Moreover, thousands of doctors "have stopped sending out appointment-reminder postcards, figuring the cards could be read by someone other than the patient. Some doctors...

Health-care advocates say a General Accounting Office report that found the federal government could not guarantee patients' medical privacy is not only accurate, but provides a glimpse of how helpless health-care consumers are when their privacy is breached. The GAO report, released late last month, found of 25 federal agencies, compliance with Privacy Act requirements and those of the Office of Management and Budget – which oversees implementation of the act – was "uneven." President George W. Bush embraces Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson after speaking about health-care reform issues. "As a result of this uneven compliance,...

Today, government bureaucrats are working to undermine our medical privacy. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-1910), or HIPAA, is a law signed by President Clinton in an attempt to achieve incremental health care reform. This law requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop standards and requirements for maintenance and transmission of health information. These standards are supposed to make the health care system more efficient and to protect patient privacy. However, separate rules drafted under both the Bush and Clinton administrations are failing to protect privacy. The Bush Administration's changes...

The government’s new medical "privacy” regulations appear to "obliterate even the minimum privacy rules that were in place,” according to a physicians group. The regulation, set to take effect in April 2003, confirms the worst nightmare of the patient – allowing doctors to disclose patient information without written permission. "Another 186 pages of mud,” said Kathryn Serkes, counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). The more the bureaucrats at HHS try to "clarify” this firestorm that began in the last days of the Clinton administration, the more they tie themselves in knots, much to the confusion of...

A well known fact about American medical privacy to those that work in the industry is that protective barriers to such privacy are easy to overcome. A little known related fact is that the transciption of American medical records are shipped offshore and in this report, that offshore country is India. For years now, it has been known that a local network of medical clinics tied to a community based hospital serving a community of more than one hundred thousand people, has been in the red (very red). The medical network's continued subsidization by their associated hospital has been justified...

Doctors and hospitals could disclose private information about patients and provide medical services without prior consent under the Bush administration's proposed revisions of Clinton-era patient "privacy" rules. The administration is gutting privacy, critics protested. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., promised hearings and legislation to reinstate the mandatory consent forms. "The administration has come down on the side of major health corporations at the expense of individuals," he charged Friday from the Senate floor. "It's really unfortunate that HHS is proposing to eliminate the consent requirement," said Janlori Goldman, who directs Health Privacy Project at Georgetown University. "If people don't know what...

165 Charlotte Twight is a professor of economics at Boise State University. The Independent Review, v.IV, n.2, Fall 1999, ISSN 1086-1653, Copyright © 1999, pp. 165–200 Watching You Systematic Federal Surveillance of Ordinary AmericansCHARLOTTE TWIGHT I magine for a moment a nation whose central government mandated ongoing collection of detailed personal information—individually identified—recording each citizen’s employment, income, childhood and subsequent educational ex-periences, medical history (including doctors’ subjective impressions), financial trans-actions (including copies of personal checks written), ancestry, living conditions (including bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom facilities), rent or mortgage payment, household expenses, roommates and their characteristics, in-home telephone service, automobile ownership,...

Doctors can disclose patient information without written permission under medical privacy rules announced by the Bush administration Thursday. The first comprehensive federal protections for health privacy will take effect in April 2003, and they'll apply to nearly every patient, doctor, hospital, insurance plan and pharmacy in the nation. Also under the new rules, parents would get more access to their children's records. Do you support revamped medical privacy rules? Link to Poll