Taking away our freedom: |
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Nipawin - December 21, 2000 - By: Mario deSantis | |
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It was yesterday that Timothy Shire sent me an e-mail and drew my attention to the fact that |
the SHIN's flop is really irrelevant when you consider our governments' hidden agenda of | |
establishing personal health records for every citizen. Our governments don't care about | |
throwing money into the garbage, what they care is to finally control the lives of all the | |
citizens by the implementation of computerized health records. This is why our own | |
provincial government along with SHIN are entering into contractual arrangements with the | |
Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), HL7 Canada and the Western Health | |
Information Collaborative (WHIC) agency(1). | |
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Bruce |
Bruce Phillips, Privacy Commissioner of Canada, has explicitly expressed his privacy |
concerns about establishing unique national identifiers for patients, facilities and service | |
providers; and introducing national standards for reporting prescription drug use(2). Health | |
care in Canada is supposed to be a public service, and now we are going to have our own | |
governments going into the private business of selling our own health records. | |
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privacy |
It is disconcerting to realize the deceptive interest of our governments to govern our lives and |
implement the consolidation of computerized health records, while at the same time hailing the | |
efficiencies provided by the related computerized health network. Health care is dysfunctional | |
across Canada, the implementation of new health information technologies have been a disaster | |
across Canada, and now we are going to have our own freedom taken away by the governmental | |
selling of our own health records. And the fear that our governments are going to infringe on | |
our own freedom is not a joke, as this same privacy concern has been raised in the United | |
States and new regulations have been passed to protect the privacy of US citizens(3). | |
-----------References/endnotes: | |
List of relevant political and economics articles http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign | |
The SHIN Saga of Health Reform: Common Problem, No Problem? By Mario deSantis, December 18, 2000 | |
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ANNUAL REPORT 1999-2000, Privacy Commissioner | |
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New Medical Privacy Rules, by Laura Meckler, Washington, December 19, 2000, The Associated Press |