HB1330 Hlth Claims Database Invades Privacy

HB1330: The All-Payer Database is a Transparency Trojan Horse

Exerpt from March 1, 2010 Opinion Editorial
By Linda Gorman

House Bill 1330 would create an "all-payer health claims database" in Colorado. Bill supporters claim government can reduce health care costs through "transparent public reporting of health care information." In fact, the bill is a transparency Trojan Horse.

It will make your most personal actions transparent to government officials, officials who have no business keeping track of what kind of health care you buy or what you pay for it. The bill authorizes the state to collect information on every health care transaction in the state, including information from private medical records, insurer files, and hospitals.

People who refuse to comply can be fined. There is no limit to the fines that may be assessed. The data that can be requisitioned and stored include individual information on physical functioning, medical treatment, supposed mental stability, marital problems, family structure, sexual habits, addictions, adherence to government health recommendations, and individual financial arrangements. If your teenager filled out the kind of questionnaire that is standard in pediatric practices, it may also contain information on whether you own a firearm, your household's illegal drug use, how well your child does in school, and whether your child or his friends have ever broken the law.

No one can opt out of the database the bill creates,... (which)is to be financed by gifts, grants, and donations from unknown sources with unknown agendas. The design of the database is controlled by an unknown "Administrator" who will decide who your data will be shared with and the form it will take. With no limits on how the data collected can be used to coerce individual behavior, this bill poses a grave threat to both medical privacy and individual liberty.

Linda Gorman directs the Health Care Policy Center at the Independence Institute.