Greg Ganske: “Mr. Speaker, I think there has been a lot of miscommunication, misunderstanding about the medical privacy provisions…”

“Mr. Speaker, I think there has been a lot of miscommunication, misunderstanding about the medical privacy provisions that we passed here in the House. I will just briefly go over those. Those medical privacy provisions would not preempt State privacy laws, they would not obstruct future State privacy laws, they would not allow insurance companies to sell medical information to drug companies, they would not block the Secretary of HHS from issuing provisions under HIPAA, which interestingly, as the chairman of the Committee on Banking and Financial Services pointed out, is limited to health insurance, whereas the provisions on medical privacy in the bill that we passed here in the House goes for all insurance. So it is more inclusive than what was in HIPAA. And it would say that, unless a customer specifically agreed, an insurer could not give any medical information to its affiliates, much less any third party; and I think that is important. I think the bill would be better with that provision in there.”