I think they are breaking the HIPPA law. As a doctor, I call

my patients on my Verizon cell phone and my Sprint office phone. If I am one of the 10 or so million whose records are now on file with NSA, that means they are breaking Public Law 104-191, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. They know who are my patients, and they know all the doctors' patients all over the country. This information is supposed to be totally private.

And a great point!!!!

Breaking the law regarding lawyer/client conversations too.

Wonder if we can all sue?

out of their offices, lined up on the bridge so we can drive-by and throw rotten veggies @ them for the rest of chuckle nuts term.

Imprisionment would be nice too...

This violates all kinds of privacy law............almost everyone in the country would have just cause to sue the govt and I imagine most courts would be inclined to agree..........

Might be a good idea to contact an attorney about it, which I may do tomorrow. Our office's provider, At&T, would have given that info about our patients. Violates confidentiality, definitely. x(

double-check that again.

It says they can provide confidential information to comply with any government regulation or something.

I always cross that out when I sign the HIPPA forms.

legal exclusions....just like FISA, fwiw.

I love the way Bush describes FISA as a "tool" and not a "law."

in itself, protected health information, under HIPAA...

to thinking that, no one was going to find out. If I were you, I would round up as many Dr's as possible and file the lawsuit (contact, ACLU) against these basters! Law suit is only thing it scares them... Hit them in their wallets where it hurts the most!

...it was either cooperate, or face some kind of problem those people could dump on you.

Look at Qwest...they refused to cooperate, and are now embroiled in all kinds of legel issues:

Qwest's troubles attract law firms
<http://www.law.du.edu/russell/vita/Media/DBJQwest.htm>
From the August 9, 2002 print edition

QUOTE:

"Qwest's legal woes with shareholders and the criminal and civil probes of its operations and accounting by the federal government have been a bonanza for law firms in Denver and throughout the country."

couldn't have done jack-shit.

that a ton of my patients are republicans?

I'm so sorry for you. (for the patients, not the profession!)

The paranoids are in touch with reality, the delusional ones are those who don't believe the government is spying on them.

to consult. they have tapped Emergency room calls to mental health professionals about a patient in their care....suicidal persons etc...
You bet this is illegal from a HIPPA standpoint.

It seems entirely reasonable.

THEY DON'T CARE.

Bush is above the law. Didn't you get the memo? If he does or orders something, by definition it is legal for him to do so.

be monitored by the government. This is an outrage. People are very sensitive about psychiatric confidentiality and rightly so.

this new development stands a VERY great chance of becoming a loyal Democrat in the future, I think.

So, INFORM AWAY!

it stopped immediately. The lawsuits cannot start fast enough.

privacy is breached under HIPPA everytime a phone call is made to a patient whether the NSA is listening or not. The phone company then has a record of that call being made. Those records are then accessible by......?????

Obviously the NSA had access to them, but who else does the phone company sell to?

And how does the phone company protect privacy of callers??

I think that this is a flaw in HIPPA

Not the only one by the way

And it certainly is a flaw in the NSA and the phone companies! (and B*)

tapping them?

NOT SO MUCH anymore.

They know who I call, who calls me, when the calls are made and, in some cases, it doesn't take long to figure out why the calls are made. Total violation of a my clients' rights to confidential communications with their lawyer. Trust me, the timing of a client's call may be all a DA needs to know in order to determine what event moved the client to call a lawyer.

The Supreme Court has ruled that we have no expectation of privacy in our phone records because we hand them over to the telephone company. Smith v. Maryland. That's like saying I have no expectation of privacy as to the number of times that I use the bathroom in my house because my water meter records the amount of water I use which reflects the number of times I flush the toilet and the water meter records go to the water company. Puhleeze. Millions of Americans disagree with that decision. The Supreme Court is about to be overruled on this one by the court of public opinion. It is about time. It is getting to the point that the information to which we can have a legitimate expectation of privacy are so few that the cloth of the Fourth Amendment is just a few bare threads dangling in the breeze. The authorities should have to have some slight suspicion of wrongdoing before they can obtain your medical records or phone records or such things. I'm all for public disclosure but isn't it ironic that this government which has done everything it possibly could to hide as much information about its own dealings -- including Abramoff's visits to the White House in which there was no privacy interest at all -- yet has been so quick to invade our privacy interests.

One of the sacred pillars of legal protections.

time and duration and nothing else. Would that still be illegal?

LAW??

Bwaaaaahahaha. Fool. Laws are for liberals and poor people.

You might have something there. HIPPA. Check. It. Out! Even big-time MDs back away from that word.

of HIPAA, two things work against any kind of remedy:

1) HIPAA applies to providers -- not to third parties unless they are contractually obligated (your accountant who signs a Bussiness Associate agreement).

2) There is no private right of action under HIPAA -- only DHHS can initate legal action.

That being said, attorney / client privlidge probably holds a lot more weight -- especially if the conversation in question revolved around current federal court litigation (criminal or cival vs government).

The Supreme's have repeatedly said that the Federal Govt. is the Federal Govt. -- a smart defense attorney might be able to get sanctions against US Attorneys for the actions of the feds.

Now I have to go research this! I love you, Mend, you're my sister, but we have a double confidentiality problem here...you're a psychiatrist, I'm a lawyer. We talk about medical things, legal things, and, of course, this mess of a country.....

I apologize for thinking you were a bit "off" when you complained that our poor phone reception on occasion was caused by "them" listening in! It probably was them.

When I sign a HIPPA agreement, I am acknowledging that the information that a doctor has may be shared with third party providers. But I know that those providers or insurance companies are NOT the NSA! I wouldn't sign the form if that was the case.

I have talked to clients on my home phone, which used to be Sprint, but is now Vonage. My cell phone provider, through TracFone, is Verizon. I have had it, I am done, we are all toast. When will the public learn?

As the bumper sticker that I saw and loved says, "IT'S OKAY...I WASN'T USING MY CIVIL LIBERTIES ANYWAY!"