Fuck Amazon, though.
New doctors generally don't want to go into primary care anymore - it doesn't pay nearly as much as being a specialist does, and you are expected to be available to your patients 365 days a year, 24 hours a day (at least that is what many patients think).
It is a pretty miserable business to be in right now, and not sure what is going to make it better.
Boy, I wish. I've never had a doctor with any kind of special availability. I can leave a message at their office but it's not like I'll get any kind of response until later the next business day, and that will just be from an assistant.
For 24/7 needs that's what urgent care is for, or the emergency room if it's more serious.
>New doctors generally don't want to go into primary care anymore
An amazingly high portion of Canadians don't have a family doctor <https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-cana...>. In Atlantic Canada (the four easternmost provinces) it is impossible, repeat impossible, to get a family doctor if you don't have one <https://web.archive.org/web/20190226051406/https://www.thete...>. It's one thing to have shortages in rural areas—that happens in the US too—but Halifax?!? I've heard the same occurs in Vancouver too.
I am confused. Vancouver is on the West Coast of Canada while your statement is about "four eastermost provinces". Is it then a nation-wide problem?
The USA has demonstrated time and time again a pattern of fining corporations a minuscule amount in comparison to the damage done.
Besides, even before it comes to fines and it's in discussion in Congressional chambers, Amazon lobbyists can say to practically any senator or congressman/congresswoman: "you want to go against us for antitrust reaons? Oh well, guess we're going to have to close that Amazon warehouse in your district that creates so many jobs...and oh yeah looks like that Whole Foods in your district isn't profitable, we're going to have to close that one up too."
They don't even need to lobby. They can just pay the fines. The fines are capped by statute at an egregiously low value, which to Amazon is chump change.
Why is that even remotely acceptable in a democratic society?
Amazon isn't actually doing this, and it isn't actually acceptable.
HIPPA fines are public, if they did this even once everyone would know.
See the big banks collective responses to regulations placed on the financial industry in the aftermath of 2008 - if the fine is significantly smaller than the potential for profits, they will do those activities and pay the fine 100% of the time. This mentality is evident in many other sectors as well, especially with publicly traded companies.
Yes, I know HIPPA fines are public. However, Amazon has enough money to not care, and to never care. You know how many labor laws Amazon has blatantly violated and not cared? If they can capture an entirely new vertical (healthcare), their share price will increase despite looming lawsuits and pesky regulations. Amazon is a multi-trillion dollar company that focuses on growth at any and all costs.
You wrote a whole paragraph about something that never actually happened, and that shows no sign of happening.
And you wrote it as if it actually happened. It's quite astonishing to read.
The fact that the penalty for many serious violations consists of fines that represent a tiny fraction of the company's worth means that breaking the law is an easy economic decision for companies. Fines are just a cost of doing business, and not even a major one.
HIPAA provides far fewer protections than you probably think it does, and flagrant violations are frighteningly common.
Worse, HIPAA provides no private right to recourse, so even if your PHI is exposed, you're not entitled to a penny in compensation.
HHS may fine Amazon, but to Amazon, $1.5 million (the maximum cap for all violations of a provision due to negligence) might as well be the cost of doing business. And you won't receive one cent of that.
Eh, that's not exactly true. HIPAA isn't the only (or even primary) vehicle for safeguarding patients from research, and most research is conducted under the auspices of large (usually academic) institutions that have processes to ensure informed consent, which are in turn backed by other legal statutes or contracts. Those aren't perfect, but it's not correct to say that patients provide blanket consent when they begin at a new practice, or that HIPAA is responsible.
https://www.ada.org/resources/practice/legal-and-regulatory/...
For starters, HIPAA doesn't actually prevent your doctor or health insurer from selling your data to a third party. It also doesn't prevent that third party from giving that data to a fourth party, who can give it to another, and so on.
What happens if one of those tertiary parties has a breach and ends up exposing your data? In theory they're supposed to report it back up the chain, but in practice it doesn't go more than one or two links, if that.
So in short:
- you have no way of enumerating the number of entities who have legal access to your health data
- you have no way of finding out when it's been illegally exposed by any of the parties who have legal access to it
- if by chance you happen to find out about an exposure[0] you have no recourse except to report it to HHS, who may apply a statutory fine, but the fine is typically minuscule compared to the size, revenue, and profit of the guilty party
- if by chance you find out about an exposure of your PHI, you are not entitled to receive any compensation
All things considered, it's easier to enumerate the very limited ways that HIPAA does actually protect you than to enumerate the protections that most people incorrectly think HIPAA provides.
[0] a real-life example is you Googling the name of your partner and stumbling upon a publicly visible Excel spreadsheet containing the name, SSN, addresses, and medical diagnoses of thousands of patients
[1] see above
Some of my family works in medicine and there is nothing that scares the pants off of medical administration more than a HIPAA data breach. There are real penalties for it from the government and they have to be reported. People responsible get fired.
Except your searching for medical conditions on google or amazon is not protected. They know.
I'm imagining a utopia in which our medical data is as well protected as people think it is under HIPAA.
> Some of my family works in medicine and there is nothing that scares the pants off of medical administration more than a HIPAA data breach. There are real penalties for it from the government and they have to be reported. People responsible get fired.
The penalties are usually in the tens of thousands of dollars. That sounds like a lot, but it's really not when you consider that most breaches for which fines are levied usually affect many patients, not just one, and when you consider the annual revenue and margins of most of these responsible parties.
The fines are capped by statute at a value (about $1.5 million for all violations of a provision in a single year) that is laughably low.
But it has some pretty huge holes in it. A lot of telemedicine services aren't covered by HIPAA, for instance.
I'm not worried about Amazon keeping my data in a public bucket, nor about Amazon employees snooping in it -- but I am 100% worried about Amazon pulling some "anonymization" BS and using my data for purposes other than providing health care to me.
I don't trust Amazon with my less sensitive data as it is -- I absolutely wouldn't want Amazon anywhere near my health data.