Obamacare: Last week, the Health and Human Services Department announced a plan to share your medical records with over 35 federal agencies. When the government is involved you should have no expectation of privacy.

Another Obamacare blow to personal privacy

By Tammy Bruce - - Monday, December 15, 2014

Get ready to fight back: Last week, the Health and Human Services Department announced a plan to share your medical records with over 35 federal agencies — all in the name of "health care," of course. All in the name of "efficiency," the favorite excuse used by fascists wherever they appear.

Of Obamacare's many assaults on our quality of life, financial security and personal privacy, there was a pre-Obamacare signal from the federal government that any expectation of medical privacy was quickly becoming a quaint, and dead, notion. Transferring your previously private medical records into "electronic" form has been eyed by Congress as early as 1996 and was ensconced in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus bill.

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act requires physicians and hospitals, under financial penalties, to transfer your secure paper-based medical records to an "electronic" system, i.e., the Internet.

The argument is it's going to somehow make the health care system more efficient, a remarkable and ironic claim from the same clowns who brought us the Obamacare and the Veterans Affairs debacles.

What this really does is remove the privacy and control in your relationship with your doctor by removing your records from their office file cabinet and dumping them into the Internet "cloud" where everyone and anyone can access them.

Now we have specifics of why the federal government is coveting this astoundingly dangerous act. Announced last week was the Health and Human Services' Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020. And what a plan it is.

The Weekly Standard tells us it "details the efforts of some 35 departments and agencies of the federal government and their roles in the plan to "advance the collection, sharing, and use of electronic health information to improve health care, individual and community health, and research," and offers a graph that shows exactly how this Kafkaesque scenario will unfold.

They will indeed collect (via electronic health records), share (patient information with "the community") and use (stating the vague notion of "advancing the health and well-being of individuals and the community" as well as "advance research, scientific knowledge and innovation").

Make no mistake about it: This is the start of a single-payer health care infrastructure. That alone is disturbing enough, as one of the main objections by citizens committed to maintaining personal freedom is governmental transition to fascism through the argument of making health care delivery more efficient, ergo, controlled by government.

By listing the federal agencies that will be participating in this health care scheme, the Federal Health IT Plan illustrates exactly why this is such a serious concern, and how it has nothing to do with delivering health care. Your personal health care information will be shared with an astounding 35 agencies (at least), offices and individuals including the Department of Defense, NASA, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Labor, the Federal Communications Commission, the HHS assistant secretary for legislation, the HHS office for civil rights, the HHS office for the general counsel, the Office of Personnel Management, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons.

Clearly, this is meant to establish the fact that every federal agency will be participating in this scheme and will have access to your health information. Not only should this be anathema to every American on principle alone, but having all of our personal information available in the cloud also poses ridiculously obvious general security threats to our personal security.

In the past few months, we have learned the computer systems of the White House, the State Department and Obamacare have all been breached. At one point, the State Department had to close down its systems for three days to regain control.

We know Obamacare was passed only because the Obama administration was comfortable with deliberately misleading the American people. We know that the federal government's computer systems are not even remotely secure. Even under the circumstances of a government that knew what it was doing this would be unacceptable. But under one that has proved it has no regard for your security and has lied time and time again, and is run by glib, incompetent and malevolent fools, we must stand against this astoundingly shocking plan.

With the release of the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan, the HHS is required to seek input from the public and has opened a two-month period ending Feb. 6, within which you can be heard. If there is one thing that represents everything dangerous about an expanding federal government, this is it. Take a stand and make sure they know you reject this unacceptable violation of your privacy and expansion of the federal government's control of our lives.