back to Niagara Falls Reporter archive
WASHINGTON -- Some developments here. While you were off doing other things and taking care of your life, you may not have noticed.
YOUR MEDICAL PRIVACY was removed and discarded like an old appendix. The Bush administration late last week proposed a big change in federal regulations designed to take effect in 2003 and protect your rights of confidentiality in health matters -- safeguards originally drawn up during the Clinton administration.
Specifically, the proposed new rules would eliminate the requirement that patients must give explicit written consent for use of their treatment records, payment ledgers, illnesses, evidence of operations, lists of medical procedures, prescriptions, and other health care transcripts. In return, you must be notified at some point in the whole unsettling process, by those who are using your health records, of what diminishing medical privacy rights you still may have.
Some deal, huh? Sort of like trading in U.S. Treasury Notes for some of that hot Enron stock.
The argument advanced by the awesomely powerful pharmaceutical and HMO lobbyists -- they've been pressuring the Bush administration since it came in -- is that existing privacy rules actually end up denying patients access to quality care in this electronic age of easily obtained information. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, trying to be reassuring, promised the changes would allow the federal government to maintain "strong protections for personal medical information while improving access to care." But such blather doesn't fool Sue A. Blevins, president of the Institute for Health Freedom, an influential non-profit think tank here that focuses on medical issues.
"The health care industry wants unfettered access to your data," she told the Reporter. "What they're saying here is 'We can do what we want, and then we'll tell you about it.' That written consent provision was demanded by thousands and thousands of citizens in the HHS public comment process. It seems like this administration is supporting secrecy for the government, while eliminating privacy for individuals. We're concerned about that."
Blevins is not the only one concerned. American Medical Association officials seemed caught by surprise at the evaporation of the written consent provision. The AMA secretary-treasurer, Dr. Donald Palmisano, called the removal a "serious problem."
The Bush re-writers argue that the Clinton rules would have been a paperwork nightmare, and would have burdened emergency room patients in no condition to make such decisions. Plus, they note, the HHS is letting stand the Clinton safeguard of letting you -- starting in April of 2003 -- inspect your own medical records kept electronically, make copies, ask for corrections, learn who else has your records, and make complaint if they appear used without your acquiescence.
The period for public comment on the new rule proposal is only a month after it is published this week or next in the Federal Register. And once HHS issues a final version, it does NOT require the approval of Congress.
SUBTLE REFORM IN THE SPY COMMUNITY has surfaced in the somewhat unexpected form of a yearly calendar. The hubris previously evident in the FBI and CIA intelligence spheres is not evident in the a spiffy new 2002 calendar put out by the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive -- an agency created by President Clinton's executive order just days before he left office. The NCIX, as it is called, has substantial input and staffing from the FBI, CIA, and Department of Defense, and is designed to work with the private sector in coordinating information sharing and identification of intelligence threats faced by the United States in these perilous times. Not so long ago, it was hard to get any of these agencies to discuss traitors inside their walls -- and now they're publishing a calendar with the infamous characters as monthly poster boys!
March is graced by Aldrich Ames, the CIA mole who was finally nailed in 1994 for providing some of the most sensitive secrets ever to the Soviets. The CIA's Harold James Nicholson is up in June. He's the high-ranking CIA intelligence expert caught in 1996 for selling classified national information to Moscow. His calendar shot shows him wearing a T-shirt inscribed "KGB Is For Me."
And right there in January, first up, is the FBI's worst nightmare, Robert Philip Hanssen, the senior FBI agent who'd been spying for the KGB since 1979 when he was arrested 13 months ago. The FBI says he provided more than 6,000 pages of top secret documents to the KGB. The NCIX is even selling a poster of Hanssen, titled "Spy-Traitor-Deceiver." The NCIX says the poster is "a reminder of the life he chose and its ultimate conclusion." It is available at www.ncix.gov and the sound of spinning you hear is J. Edgar Hoover in his grave. I'd guess about 4,500 RPMs.
CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM provides the optimistic news. The Senate last week, after more than six years of congressional foot-dragging, finally approved the first major overhaul of campaign finance law by banning "soft money" contributions -- the unregulated, unlimited, and immense provision of funds from big business, unions, fat cats and just about anyone seeking leverage with the federal government.
Such "soft" donations in the last presidential election cycle totaled nearly half a billion dollars -- a veritable tsunami of dirty dough that threatens to cripple effective government with influence and corruption.
Also proscribed are so-called "issues ads" relating to national races within two months of a general election or within 30 days of a primary. These are the ones you are used to seeing on the tube that masquerade as an "issues" stance, but are really negative attacks on a candidate targeted by a corporation, union, or non-profit advocacy group which disagrees with the beliefs of the person in the cross-hairs.
President Bush has already said he will sign the bill into law. Campaign finance reform foes will quickly challenge the statute in federal courts -- partially on the grounds it violates "free speech." As the fella says, ain't nuthin' "free" about it. Leading the court attack against the reform law -- one Kenneth W. Starr.
Look for three things.
Because the limits on "hard money" contributions to candidates are raised to $2,000 for national races, and to $25,000 for political parties, the practice known as "bundling" will become more and more important. That is when campaign operatives known as "bundlers" convince associates, colleagues, and friends to slap down $2,000 apiece, often at a dinner, so a fat envelope full of these checks can be slipped to a candidate or party official -- all on the up and up, even under the new law.
Because hard money is now king, Congress will soon find itself debating efforts to give Joe Sixpack a tax credit for political contributions -- maybe $50 or $100 or $200 given back at income tax time. The thinking goes that politicians would thus have an incentive to go after such small potatoes and give the common man some clout.
Because none of this matters if the Federal Election Commission doesn't write effective regulations to conform to the new law, Congress will have to turn the toothless FEC upside down and transform it into an agency that actually enforces a law instead of negating it with loopholes. The reform, by the way, goes into effect after the 2002 elections.
FINALLY, TWO QUOTES have triggered the adrenalin flow in this sleepy old scribe. One is from National Rifle Association executive Wayne LaPierre, who has suffered the slings and arrows of this keyboard before. LaPierre, in a recent speech (available at www.nrahq.org), was deriding the invasive, sometimes idiotic procedures now standard in airport security lines, including the confiscation of finger-nail clippers from unsuspecting self-groomers. (Comedian Robin Williams, in his new stand-up routine, speculates the passenger screeners must "expect some guy to stand up and shout: Give me the plane or this bitch loses a hangnail!")
Anyway, LaPierre really got rolling. Noting that even congressmen with artificial hips and war heroes carrying the Medal of Honor are being hassled at the mag machine, LaPierre said, "I guess it's OK to wand-rape someone's daughter in public, but no profiling. No, we don't want to risk offending an Islamic ex-con with two aliases and no job, paying cash for a one-way airline ticket with no luggage, whose shoes are packed with plastic explosives. Who're we fooling? Terrorists fit into fairly narrow categories of gender, age, nationality and religion."
The other quote comes from Robert Kuttner, editor of the very liberal magazine "American Prospect," who complained of President George W. Bush leaking plans to attack Iraq, creating a shadow government, and decrying an "axis of evil" without many specifics: "George W. Bush in his own way is as frightening as Al Qaeda.Terrorism, unfortunately, is all too real. But so is one's terror of the Bush presidency."
For the record, this time I agree with the NRA guy.
When I get on a plane these days, I'm all for profiling. And I think Kuttner is out to lunch. I'm much more afraid of Osama than I am of Dubya.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | March 26 2002 |