HIPAA 25 Years On: The Value of Healthcare Privacy In Technological Age
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, 1996, has been routinely considered a model piece of privacy legislation. Prior to its creation, a patchwork of both state and federal laws governed the communication, distribution, and use of medical data for patient care and finances. Inconsistencies in these laws allowed the access of these data without any authorization, including personal sanctioning of sharing, from the individual whose data was to be used for the purposes of assessing anyone’s potential for production and maintenance. This was especially relevant in the realm of financial lending and insurance, whereby lenders and insurers can bypass personal subjective assessments to view medical history as a means of assessing stability - determining if a candidate would be sustainable enough to produce a capital gain. This also affected employment opportunities with production being a function of health, often selecting for those without or with minimal complications, even if left undisclosed can easily be evident through this quick access.
Most importantly, individuals lost control over who and where that information was shared and were never notified of its distribution and the level of access the recipients were to have. A loss of control
