Lateefah Simon: “like most bills, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act contains both good and more worrisome…”

“like most bills, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act contains both good and more worrisome provisions. Some of the better provisions, such as portability, are not perfect and others of importance, such as mental health parity, are now completely absent. One important provision in this bill that has not received much attention is administrative simplification. It sounds innocuous enough. It aims to cut administrative costs by standardizing the way medical information is electronically stored and transmitted. No one is against cutting health care costs. This standardization, however, accelerates the creation of large data bases containing personally identifiable information. All this information is transmitted over electronic networks. We need to be very careful about how safe and secure that information is from prying eyes. Some of it may be extremely sensitive and could be used in a malicious or discriminatory manner. Not only do we need to hold this information securely, we also need to give individuals control over who actually has access to their medical records.”