Congress Renews Efforts to Assign Americans a Patient I.D.

[mountaineer]

Congress Renews Efforts to Assign Americans a Patient I.D.
Kevin Stone
November 29, 2021

Health care providers, insurance companies, and government agencies once again are promoting the idea of a “unique patient identifier (UPI),” a number assigned to all Americans to identify and manage health care information.

 The push for a UPI, also known as a national patient identifier has been significant enough that Ron Paul, the chairman for Campaign for Liberty and former U.S. representative, put out a statement in a joint release with Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R – TN) on November 2.

“As a physician, I know firsthand how much the doctor-patient relationship relies on trust and privacy, which would be undermined by a National Patient ID,” said Paul. “Now, more than ever, it is crucial to protect Americans’ genetic information from theft by foreign actors like China and prevent the government from centralizing patients’ personal health records or interfering with their medical decisions.” ...

In 1996, Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed into law the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which called for the creation of a UPI. Then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) inserted language in the HIPAA legislation that barred the government from spending any money to develop a unique identifier. The legislation simultaneously set a goal and blocked government funding for achieving the goal.

In the summer of 2019, at the urging of groups including the American Health Information Management Association and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executive, US Reps. Bill Foster (D-IL 11) and Mike Kelly (R-PA 16) introduced an amendment to strike the language inserted into HIPAA by Paul from the fiscal year 2020 Labor-HHS Appropriations bill.

While the amendment was not included in the final version of the bill, passed in December of 2019, the bill did require the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) to issue a report within one year that evaluates the effectiveness of current patient matching methods and issues recommendations that would more accurately match patients to their personal health data.

On July 31, 2020, the U.S. House passed the 2021 omnibus package that included the removal of Section 510 of the Labor-HHS bill prohibiting federal funds for the promulgation or adoption of a UPI. The Senate Appropriations Committee subsequently removed Section 510 from its version of the bill.
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All of my doctors already have my SSN. So what's the point?

[Hoodat]

I've seen this movie before.

[mountaineer]

Speaking of privacy being an illusive concept, my county's health department posted this on Facebook today:

___ County Health Department
·
If you have recently tested positive for Covid-19, please answer calls that may not look familiar.
The Health Department will not always be the ones calling you to investigate your case.
The Health department assigns cases out to a state call center, this is a huge help to our department. It gives our employees time to focus on other important matters along with day to day operations.

When I shared it, I received the following response:

I had covid a couple weeks ago and received so many calls. People wanting me to answer a 45 minute questionnaire about my symptoms.

Gee, do they do this with STD patients, too?