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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 22 March 2001 | Vol. II #42 | ||
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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 22 March 2001 | Vol. II #42 | ||
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Readers of NewsMax.com are now aware that the federal government was scheduled to implement, on Feb. 26, medical privacy regulations left over from the Clinton administration that would have given the government agency HHS unprecedented access to information contained in personal medical records.
Fortunately, the date was postponed when a groundswell of opposition developed as a result of a Feb. 22 press release issued by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).
The AAPS warned that although the regulations are shrouded in language to make it appear they are protecting "medical privacy," they are in fact an attempt eliminate the privacy of your medical records.
The alert was so effective that it jammed the e-mail system at the Department of Health and Human Services.
The AAPS press release pointed out that even though problems exist with specific provisions in the regulations, the bottom line is that this is such a bad set of regulations that they must be completely discarded.
The Bush administration and HHS should scrap them.
Dr. Jane Orient, AAPS executive director, stated, "The draft rule [Federal Register for 12/28/00, pp. 82829-82462] of the regulation is so flawed in concept and execution that a total new beginning is needed."
This 1,500-page document, enacted to fulfill part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, was a direct result of the Clinton view that the government should control every aspect of U.S. medical care.
Thus, the regulations, touted as protecting patient privacy, would actually compromise your privacy.
What could the regulations entail?
Kathryn Serkes, AAPS public relations counsel, has pointed out:
The rules create a massive federal mandate that requires every doctor to share patients' records with the federal government, without patient consent.
Patients may have no guarantee of recourse for breaches of medical privacy other than the right to complain.
The regulations may prevent doctors from informing parents of the specifics of their child's medical condition.
Patients may be refused medical treatment if they won't give consent to health care providers to divulge their medical records to any parties.
Moreover, as pointed out by Drs. Michael Glueck and Robert Cihak (who happens to be the current president of the AAPS) in their online news column of March 19:
The regulations will apply to all individuals regardless of whether their health care is paid for by them or by the government.
Under the proposed regulations, the government, not you, will decide who has access to your medical records.
And it is the government that can look into your electronic medical records - including genetic information - without getting your OK.
Glueck and Cihak add: "The regulations would also make it easier for government bureaucrats to look into your medical records, again without your permission. In fact, any government agent claiming a 'national priority purpose' can poke around in your most private medical details. In many cases, the government can then release your personal medical information from government files, without anybody having to ask you for permission."
This is frightening.
Furthermore, Andrew L. Schlafly, Esq., AAPS general counsel, has also expressed concerns that:
The new rules operate to limit a patient's access to his own records, state laws notwithstanding, while giving the government unfettered access.
The new rules allow state governments to effectively eviscerate the protections by compiling and distributing records, as Texas is considering doing now with respect to a new vaccine registry.
HHS can disclose personal medical information, if required by any other law. Instead, other laws should be pre-empted by the privacy rule.
Medical researchers can withhold records from subjects who agree to be tested with new drugs and treatments. Is this designed to conceal trial failures?
To maintain control of your own private medical information, AAPS suggests that:
1. The government protect, not eliminate, your right to require your consent before your personal medical information can be given out;
2. You should not be forced to accept a "unique health identifier" ID number for tagging and tracking your medical records electronically;
3. And, if anyone, including a government official, abuses your privacy and breaks the law, you should have the right to sue that individual and be compensated for invasion of your privacy.
Remember, the clock is ticking.
Act now.
You only have until March 30, 2001, to take advantage of the official comment period to Secretary Thompson.
"Washington's dirty little secret is out -- the so-called 'final federal medical privacy rule' recently announced by the federal government gives us less privacy, not more," stated Kent Snyder of The Liberty Committee.
Section 160.310: Grants the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services access to a person's medical information without his consent or a warrant.
Section 164.512: Grants many third parties access to a person's medical information (including genetic information) without his written, informed, non-coerced (as in "sign away your right to privacy or we will deny treatment") consent.
Sections 164.502 and 164.506: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has the ultimate authority to decide who can access your medical records without your informed consent.
"The truth is that laced throughout the 367-page federal medical privacy rule are provisions that actually give a patient less control over his own medical records than he currently has. At the same time, these regulations give federal, state, and local governmental agencies -- along with insurance companies, HMOs and others -- more access and more control than the patient himself has," Kent Snyder stated.
Reacting to growing public concern, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson reopened the comment period on these deceptive "privacy" regulations. Unfortunately, in order for a citizen's comment to be acceptable, it must follow guidelines as to form and content -- thus ensuring that many well-meant and deeply felt concerns will be discarded as simply not in compliance. As a public service, The Liberty Committee is providing a free on-line petition that meets the guidelines for comments and reminds Washington what the true definition of "privacy" is.
The petition can be found here
The Liberty Committee is a nationwide, grassroots organization of over 51,000 Americans whose goal is to defend and advance liberty by restoring our national government to its constitutional limitations.
[ The Liberty Committee ]
Pro-life organizations are fired up over a pending federal regulation, devised during the last days of the Clinton administration, that could, according to critics, redefine the terms "fetus" and "child" and result in the legal use of newborns for scientific research.
The regulation, which was cleared by the Clinton administration on January 17, but then postponed by the Bush administration, states that a newborn is still considered a "fetus" until it is determined the baby will live by "independently maintaining a heartbeat and respiration." Only when this determination is made is the baby considered a "child," according to the rule.
When the Bush Administration took office, it immediately placed a 60-day moratorium on the implementation of Clinton's fetus rule as well as many others. The moratorium expired March 19, but last week, a group of pro-life congressmen managed to convince Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson to extend the moratorium on the fetus rule by another 60 days.
Reps. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), James Barcia (R-Mich.) and Joseph Pitts (R-Pa.) now find themselves at the center of the controversy, following their letter to Thompson.
"If this rule is allowed to proceed, the position of the federal Department of Health and Human Services with regard to 'human research subjects' will be that babies born alive are not necessarily children," the congressmen wrote. "This cannot and should not be the position of an agency tasked with defending children and protecting life."
Although the regulation has not yet taken effect, some pro-life organizations believe the four congressmen could have done more to block it permanently.
"It shouldn't take 60 days to see how bad this is, it only took me forty-five minutes," said American Life League Spokesman Patrick Delaney. "And the curious lack of fundamental ethical standards is directly reminiscent of the Nazi doctors."
Delaney said the regulation degrades humans to the point of treating them like specimens for research.
"I personally can't help but to be reminded of the Nazi doctors who determined human persons as experimental guinea pigs," Delaney said. "These regulations seem to be no different and these so-called regulations are a semantic rationalization for murdering innocent human beings."
Delaney said pro-life voters elected President Bush in hopes that his administration would revoke such regulations left over from the Clinton administration. However, President Bush has been disappointing in this area, Delaney said.
"It seems to us that repeal of these regulations is a no-brainer and the hesitation of the Bush administration in only issuing a sixty-day extension is outrage in itself," he said. "We believe in order for politicians like Tommy Thompson and George W. Bush to claim that title of pro-life, they need to respect personhood of a child beginning from conception.
"If they don't, it is our opinion they would have no claim to say they are pro-life," Delaney said.
Other groups are equally determined to get the Bush administration to rid the federal books of similar regulations.
Michael Schwartz, Vice President of Concerned Women for America zeroed in on the regulation's attempt to redefine the terms, fetus and child.
"What really is of concern here are definitions. You don't pass laws embodying definitions. A law is supposed to be a directive," Schwartz said. "To try to find a legislative fix to a definitional problem is the wrong thing to do unless we can connect it to some comprehensive, ... protective law for human research."
Schwartz added that the fetus regulation was actually proposed in 1997, "but like so many things, it slipped people's attention until right before it was supposed to be enacted."
According to a summary, the proposed HHS rule is intended to "provide additional protections for pregnant women and human fetuses involved in research…[and] enhance the opportunity for participation of pregnant women in research."
[ CNS ]
No, it's not an April Fool's joke: But on April 1, Bill Clinton is to receive an "annual award of merit" at a Hollywood event called "A Family Celebration 2001." Elizabeth Taylor, a big booster of families, will hand over the award. Unfortunately, Bill's family won't be in attendance. But Hillary will be there via videotape ... to speak glowingly of another award winner, not her husband. "She wasn't asked to speak about Bill and she didn't ask to do so. I don't know that she's aware he's receiving an award for his family," says a Hillary aide in the Senate.
The event, underwritten by big DNC donor Cynthia Gershman, is billed as "Hollywood's celebration of the family." Wow. Other awardees and participants: Whoopi Goldberg (child out of wedlock; marriages? unknown); Sylvester Stallone (divorced, remarried); the cast of "Ally McBeal" (no families, no marriages), and Rod Stewart (who knows?).
"When we heard it was Gershman, we assumed Al was going to be a part of it. After that kiss and the convention, and having grandkids and everything," says a former Clinton aide who has been invited to the event. "But they didn't want Gore. They wanted Bill. They still love him in Hollywood."
[ Washington Prowler ]
"In the context of narcissism, the mystery of children killing becomes less mysterious. That we have more such killers than we used to isn't so much about guns and bullies as it is about our Me-First culture, a convenient mechanism of which is media fame." --Kathleen Parker
"Taxes are not just about money. Every tax represents a transfer of power and freedom from the people to the government. The underlying premise of every tax is that the money will do more good in the hands of government than in the hands of the people who earned it." -Linda Bowles
"Don't give up your ideals. Don't compromise. Don't turn to expediency. And don't...having seen the inner workings of the watch, don't get cynical.... Don't get cynical, because look at yourselves and what you are willing to do, and recognize that there are millions and millions of Americans out there who want what you want, who want it to be that way, who want it to be a shining city on a hill." --Ronald Reagan
"The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about 'social justice' all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get re-elected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice." --Thomas Sowell
"Certainly, there are plenty of dragons to be slain at the Federal level. It takes $40,000 to deliver the $16,000 average benefit to a welfare family. The Pentagon can't even find billions of dollars worth of planes, boats, guns and tanks. The Department of Education has ruined more schools than it ever helped. Energy Department is worthless, the EPA spends six times more money on attorneys than cleaning up toxic dump sites, and the vast waste and corruption in Medicare is truly legendary. All I'm looking for is a stinking 1% tax break. But there is far too much political power and money to be made at the federal feeding trough. Washington politicians may waste a lot of things, but the opportunity to attach a snug leash to the American taxpayer will never disappear."
[ Tom Adkins, "The Common Conservative ]
** Disclosure Made by Justice Department During Riady Plea Agreement Hearing
** DNC Lied to Press Corps and American People
Judicial Watch, Inc., the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, opposed the Riady plea agreement in the Chinagate scandal. It was in Court last Monday and learned, from the Justice Department lawyers, that, contrary to public statements, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has never refunded or disgorged the illegal foreign contributions which it received from Riady. The issue arose under the plea agreement because in the unlikely event Mr. Riady receives the refunds back from the DNC, he must turn them over to the United States.
The revelation that the DNC has not voluntarily disgorged, or been forced to disgorge, the illegal foreign campaign contributions, underscores the sham and bogus nature of the Justice Department's campaign finance investigations and prosecutions. In addition, not one DNC or Clinton-Gore White House official has been prosecuted, much less indicted, in the Chinagate scandal. While Mr. Riady and others deserved "a lot more" than they received for their crimes of bribery and treason against the American people, the hard fact is that only minorities, such as Asian Americans, have been prosecuted at all.
"None of the fat cat 'white guys' at the DNC or the Clinton-Gore White House have been held to account. Nor have the politicians, such as Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Robert Torricelli (D-NJ), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and others who received illegal monies from Riady and his operative, John Huang. Indeed, even Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao arranged for [illegal] contributions from Huang to Senator Alfonse D'Amato. There is a dual system of justice, and the high Caucasian echelon of the Washington elite are currently above the law," stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman.
"Judicial Watch has 11 Chinagate lawsuits and is working hard to have the 'white guys' of the DNC, Clinton-Gore White House, and others held accountable under the rule of law. Unlike the Bush Administration, we will not be 'blackmailed' into failing to represent the American people. The Bush Administration seem afraid of the Republican involvement in the Chinagate scandal, and this has caused it not to bring about justice," added Klayman.
[ Judicial Watch ]
An article in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times suggests that President Bush is ignoring the issues dominating Washington, instead preferring to focus "single-mindedly, almost relentlessly, on a handful of priorities" without regard to the front-page headlines. As a result, the newspaper says, "Bush may be the first 'A4' president: entirely comfortable repeating familiar arguments for his proposals, even if that means appearing on an inside page of the newspaper's front section, such as Page A4, that attracts far less attention than Page 1." The sharper focus on fewer issues is a hallmark of Bush's service as governor of Texas, and it is a sharp contrast to the pattern set by former President Clinton, who injected himself into most issues dominating the news.
TCN Comment: The main-stream "news" media are throwing fits over not being able to manipulate the White House. For many years the media have been able to run their agenda on the front page and manipulate public opinion which in turn was the driving force behind the White House agenda. When the polls run the government and the media run the polls and the information source behind the opinions being expressed in the polls, it makes the media very powerful.
The situation has changed in the GW White House however. The president has stopped the daily polls by white House staff. GW has an agenda that he ran on and is now working to make happen. He has no interest in what the media wants to happen and sees no reason to change his course based on the media manipulated polls.
What is the result of such an attitude toward the media? They threaten to move him to the middle of the news section instead of the front page. So what's new? All I have seen on the front page lately besides a Clinton or a Rodham is Je$$e Jack$on anyhow.
Considering the number of votes that might be lost by any Republican candidate because they didn't make the front page in LA (or any urban area in California), I doubt that this threat will even see GW's desk.
There has been a lot of news lately about the energy crisis. High cost of heating oil, high cost of gas at the pumps, California rolling blackouts, etc. I have studied this subject and if elected President I will implement the following plan.
Due to the fact that the environmental extremists have gotten their way for the past twenty or so years, we have not built any new petroleum refineries and the ones we have are running at near capacity. Al Gore and the environmental extremists want to do away with the internal combustion engine. We need to reduce the demand for petroleum products so here is my first plan. When I'm elected President all of those people who consider themselves environmentalists will be given one year to rid themselves of their internal combustion machines. Look at the energy savings this would produce. It would force those consumers to use the alternative energy sources that they boast about all the time for their transportation. Look at the savings and the reduced emissions that would result.
In my second plan, those same groups of consumers who have opposed the development of more electrical generating plants would have one year to convert their homes to some alternative energy source, solar, wind etc because at the end of the year their homes, offices and the like would have the power lines pulled. (There are currently over 20 new electrical plants on the drawing board in California alone but they can't even get one built because of the environmental extremists)
The bottom line is that if these people would just do what they say, we would not have the problem! I watched in amazement a few years ago at the local Earth Day Celebration when these supposed Environmentalists drove their internal combustion machines to the event and created 40,000 pounds of plastic waste celebrating protecting the environment.
I think you get the point!!!!!!!
[ Ike Harley ]
It's a touchy subject, but Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo, in his second term from Colorado, says the United States can no longer "absorb" the number of immigrants welcomed to the country.
"The immigration into this country over the last 10 years has been extraordinary," says the congressman. "We must begin the debate, although it is a difficult one, we must begin the debate on exactly what this country will look like. How many people are we going to let in here, both legally and illegally?"
He cites the tremendous financial costs of handling immigrants, infrastructure development, schooling, housing and social services.
Last week, Georgia's senior senator, Democrat Max Cleland, called attention on the Senate floor to the rapid growth of the Hispanic population in his state.
"In 1991," Mr. Cleland revealed, "the Hispanic population in Dalton, Georgia, was only 4 percent. And now, 10 years later, Hispanic enrollment in Dalton public schools has skyrocketed to 51 percent."
Almost half of the recent arrivals, he says, continue to speak Spanish.
[ John McCaslin, Inside the Beltway ]
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