Health & Tax Privacy: Gone for Good Under Gov't Health Care Takeover

Thought the Bill of Rights protected your privacy? In the Obama Nation?

You may not be aware of it, but the $838 billion so-called "stimulus" bill, rushed through Congress without a reading, mandated the publication of every American's medical records to the national "electronic health record." In practice, that means our health records will be turned over--without our consent--to more than 600,000 covered entities, plus their employees. (And we were assured that bill was about the economy.)

Now HR 3200, if passed, will mandate that the IRS give out whatever information regulators desire about every American's tax records. Thanks to Declan McCullagh at CBS for the following heads-up:

Section 431(a) of the bill says that the IRS must divulge taxpayer identity information, including the filing status, the modified adjusted gross income, the number of dependents, and "other information as is prescribed by" regulation. That information will be provided to the new Health Choices Commissioner and state health programs and used to determine who qualifies for "affordability credits."

Section 245(b)(2)(A) says the IRS must divulge tax return details -- there's no specified limit on what's available or unavailable -- to the Health Choices Commissioner. The purpose, again, is to verify "affordability credits."

Think you can protect your tax information by not signing up for Gov't Health Care? No such luck. The government wants everybody's tax information, just in case some people don't apply for Gov't Care.

Section 1801(a) says that the Social Security Administration can obtain tax return data on anyone who may be eligible for a "low-income prescription drug subsidy" but has not applied for it.

I have no idea how this mandate will apply to the people who currently don't have to file income tax forms because their incomes are too low for the IRS to bother with. Maybe they'll have to start filing, for their own good, of course.

Over at the Institute for Policy Innovation (a free-market think tank and presumably no fan of Obamacare), Tom Giovanetti argues that: "How many thousands of federal employees will have access to your records? The privacy of your health records will be only as good as the most nosy, most dishonest and most malcontented federal employee.... So say good-bye to privacy from the federal government. It was fun while it lasted for 233 years.

Question: With hundreds of thousands of government agencies and, obviously, millions of their employees and contractors' employees having access to every American's identity, medical, and tax records, how many laptops will hold big chunks of that information? How many of those laptops will be lost or stolen?

Question: If a health care entity outsources its record keeping to a firm in, say, India, does that mean our individual health and tax records (including social security numbers) will become available for international phishing expeditions, not just the domestic kind?

Question: What if community organizations like ACORN are enlisted to help people apply for or receive medical services? How deep into our general population will the information get?

Not so long ago, Democrats demanded, to a chorus of weeping and gnashing of teeth, that Americans respect the privacy of likely or known terrorists communicating with likely or known terrorists abroad. Result: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court located in Washington, D.C. reviews any such privacy intrusions before they happen to determine their necessity.

But what about protecting the preference of mere U.S. citizens to give or withhold their consent for widespread government sharing of their most private and personal information, information that could easily end up being used for sinister non-medical reasons like, say, identity theft, not to mention political intrigue?

So far I haven't detected even one Democrat's crocodile tear. What are American Democrats thinking?
__________