SEPT 6 DEADLINE – Comment now on proposed National Patient ID Card
The Obama Administration may soon require all citizens to have a federally-imposed national patient ID card.The deadline for your comments is Tuesday, September 6 – the day after Labor Day.
****UPDATE:
HHS has reopened the comment secton on the Regulations.gov website through 11:59pm Tuesday September 6, 2011****
Please CLICK HERE to go the Regulations.gov website to submit your comments.
(Note: when you arrive at the site click the orange “Submit a Comment” button.)
Read the comment submitted by AAPS:
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a national organization of physicians in all specialties founded in 1943 to preserve the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship, objects strenuously to any requirement that patients participate in an electronic database as a condition of receiving medical care.
Such databases are inevitably subject to breaches of confidentiality. Even if unauthorized use could be reliably prevented, “authorized” users include many entities not approved by or even known to the patient, which do not have any responsibility to serve the patient’s interests.
The federal government has no constitutional authority to dictate the terms under which medical care may be received, or to dictate the terms of contractual relationships Americans may enter to help finance their medical treatment.
If patients wish to surrender their privacy as a condition of obtaining government-approved third-party payment for medical services, they arguably have the right to do so. However, consent must be fully informed—an impossibility when the rules are complex and obscure, as in this document. Under no circumstances should “consent” be obtained under the duress of losing access to medical care or the right to enter a private insurance arrangement.
