NEGATIVE — MEDICAL — SOLVENCY 244

EFFORTS TO PROTECT MEDICAL PRIVACY WILL FAIL

LEGISLATION TO RESOLVE MEDICAL PRIVACY IS DOOMED TO FAIL

Charles Sykes, Senior Fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Institute, THE END OF PRIVACY, 1999, EE2001 -JGM, p. 116

But if the past patterns of privacy legislation hold, any bill that survives the process will be unlikely to solve the problem, and may even make it worse. One overriding concern is that bills that purport to strengthen privacy protections may actually undermine them, 1) by preempting tougherstate laws or by leaving gaping loopholes that allow politicians to claim success, while leaving patients naked in the coming data storms.

THERE ARE NO SIMPLISTIC SOLUTIONS TO PROTECTING THE PRIVACY OF MEDICAL RECORDS

The Paul Starr, Professor of Sociology, Princeton University, "Health and the Right to Privacy," American Journal of Law & Medicine, 1999, 25 Am. J. L. and Med. 193, EE2001-JGM, p. 194

effort and planning required to protect privacy in health care defy simplistic answers. The sheer scale of our health care system and the complex flows of data among providers, networks, insurers, employers, and government agencies inevitably require a complex structure of legal rules and technical provisions to maintain the security and confidentiality of personal health information. But this complexity is itself a problem. It is impossible for individual patients or citizens to know whether these systems actually safeguard their data. And in an age of cynicism about large institutions, many people are ready to believe the worst - especially when they hear news reports of egregious episodes in which the privacy of medical records has been violated. The object of law and policy, therefore, is doubly difficult: it must not only protect privacy, health, and other legitimate interests; it must also produce public trust in institutions.