Government Now Wants To Collect Social and Behavioral Data For Your Electronic Health Record (Congress, health care)
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That's part of the agenda of total control and power - Obamacare is not about your health, it is not about saving money, it's all about expanding the government's power and control over your life and expanding profits/stifling competition for the insurance companies and drug companies. I imagine the primary use of this social/behavioral data will be to track people's behavior and use the slightest deviation from the norm as an excuse to prescribe expensive psychotropic drugs; probably there will be nudges from HHS and the insurance exchanges to get people to take their medicine, and shortly afterwards the nudge will turn into a shove. The bottom line is that the whole apparatus is an assault upon the people by the political/corporate elite.
I'd also like to bet that the NSA will want their cut of this social/behavioral data - couple it with facial recognition, cameras everywhere, and license plate readers and you can know where people are and what they're doing at all times, which makes them easier to predict and control, especially if you add in the drugs and the excuse that "we're all in this together" when it comes to "public health". If you thought you had a country, look again - that country you had is beginning to resemble a prison.
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Originally Posted by LauraC
Though the program is “totally voluntary,” eligible professionals who are not using EHRs by 2015 will see a 1 percent reduction in their Medicare and Medicaid fees each year."
And none will say WHY this is being collected.
Few acknowledge their agencies are collecting this data; others deny it; others just refuse to answer.
We have that big data center in Utah and a second one is being planned.
I know because there is no valid reason for the data to be collected. Since there can be no valid reason, it is irrelevant what the reason happens to be. It's like saying "How do you know the answer to the problem isn't to divide by zero if you haven't heard the problem?" I know that because you cannot divide by zero, so it doesn't matter what the problem is. The answer cannot be to divide by zero.
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The article doesn't include the full proposal. I've seen previous such proposals for data to be added to EHR systems, and each time the need for the data is clearly explained.
As I just said, it doesn't matter what the proposal is. It involves collecting private information from people. If the behavior the people are engaging in is not illegal, then it is not the government's business to track it.
Sure the government can track broad trends across society, but tracking what foods an individual likes to eat or what hobbies they have that might affect their health is an invasion of privacy. It doesn't matter why they want the information. They aren't entitled to it. Period.
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I know you like to jump to the conclusions that everything the government does is wrong, everything the government has is bad, and your preferences are more important than how having such data in EHR systems may make things better for other people, for society overall, and probably for you too (despite your claims to the contrary), but that's just your personal preference.
You can claim to "know" whatever you like about me, but what I "know" is that you've just engaged in strawman argument. Your statement is little different than when people say "you only disagree with Obama because he's black"
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It's not the law. The law actually allows for establishment of requirements for collection of data, with sufficient protections for privacy as outlined by a set of standards.
And as we've seen with the recent NSA issues, the government doesn't always follow its standards. Experience proves that the citizens are safer if the government just doesn't invade our privacy at all rather than trusting the government to invade our privacy responsibly. Right after Obama said that he was satisfied that appropriate controls were in place regarding the NSA data collection, a report came out listing thousands upon thousands of violations.
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Your personal rejection of the sufficiency those standards is just a reflection of your bias, and your insistence that your personal bias should override society's standards, which factor in your concerns but arrive at a difference conclusion, is without any merit whatsoever.
I'm not making a personal rejection. I'm saying the government should follow the constitution. The court has held that there is a right to privacy in the constitution. If it is a violation of your privacy for the government to tell you what to do with your body, then it naturally follows that it is a violation of your privacy for the government to track what you do with your body. The government has no authority to determine what my health care decisions should be, and so therefore it has no valid authority for recording my family health history in a government database.
And my "insistence that my personal bias should override society's standards" is simply another strawman of yours. The right to privacy is not my personal bias. It is a constitutional right. Declaring it to be my person bias is handy for you so you can dismiss what I've said as having no merit, but that doesn't make it true.
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And make no mistake: This type of data has already been established as needed and the measures to safeguard that data has already been established as sufficient, by society (since it is already collected for some people), despite your personal preferences.
It doesn't matter how needed it is. Our rights are inalienable. The government doesn't get to decide that some personal information about you is needed and demand to know it. That is a violation of the individual.
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If data is stored on a hard drive inside your body, it absolutely should be protected in the manner you suggest. Is that the issue? Are you a computer, rather than a human being?
My family health history is just as much my personal information as is the data stored on my computer hard drive. If the government needs a warrant to search my hard drive, then it should have similar restrictions on accessing my health information.
I know because there is no valid reason for the data to be collected.
You don't "know". You decided. There's a difference.
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Originally Posted by kidkaos2
Since there can be no valid reason, it is irrelevant what the reason happens to be.
This is the kind of self-ratifying nonsense I could see someone writing to defend their religious credo. "Since I've decided that it cannot be useful information, the reasons given for the information being useful don't exist."
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Originally Posted by kidkaos2
As I just said, it doesn't matter what the proposal is.
More pointlessly self-ratifying nonsense. "It's not real because I say it isn't real, because the only things that are real are the things I deign to allow to be real." That's exactly what you're saying.
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Originally Posted by kidkaos2
You can claim to "know" whatever you like about me, but what I "know" is that you've just engaged in strawman argument.
Not even a little. I've highlighted your consistent rhetoric, nothing more. The alternative would be some idiocy about you deserving an unrebutted soapbox for your corrupted perspectives. That's nonsense.
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Originally Posted by kidkaos2
And as we've seen with the recent NSA issues, the government doesn't always follow its standards.
Life isn't perfect. Part of maturity is accepting that there will be imperfection, and understanding that it is unreasonable to insist that things you don't like be perfect while things you do like can be as imperfect as you care for them to be. The point is that society determines what is sufficient protection, what standards are adequate. Don't like it? Find a different society where each individual person gets to make up the rules for everyone else. Hint: That society you want is mathematically impossible.
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Originally Posted by kidkaos2
Experience proves that the citizens are safer if the government just doesn't invade our privacy at all rather than trusting the government to invade our privacy responsibly.
That's not your call to make, unilaterally. Rather, we make that decision - whether the benefits of the use of this data is worth the risk of misuse - as a society. Your personal preference doesn't trump the decision.
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Originally Posted by kidkaos2
I'm not making a personal rejection. I'm saying the government should follow the constitution.
The Constitution allows the government to make this decision as it sees fit.
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Originally Posted by kidkaos2
The court has held that there is a right to privacy in the constitution.
The court has also held that most constitutional rights are limited. [Source: District of Columbia v. Heller.]
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Originally Posted by kidkaos2
The government has no authority to ... And my "insistence that my personal bias should override society's standards" is simply another strawman of yours.
No it isn't. Your words right before this statement of yours are precisely this, even though you have to deny it to preclude admitting your perspective is wrong. It is an almost perfect description of the comments you made
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Originally Posted by kidkaos2
It is a constitutional right.
A limited right.
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Originally Posted by kidkaos2
Our rights are inalienable.
False. Most constitutional rights are limited. SCOTUS said so.
The government will data mine and analyze this data for their own advantage.
Social engineering is much easier to accomplish when you start from a known source and this will provide them with that.
The government will have your EHR, phone and internet usage, credit card purchases, etc. all in their supercomputer databases.
Just think what all that information can do.
I can tell you that the corporation I work for has been mining this data for years AND us it to calculate our various insurance rates.
If the questions get any more intrusive; I will simply refuse to answer.
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