Why Obama Had to Waive HIPAA in Orlando; Slate, 6/12/16

Jeremy Samuel Faust, Slate; Why Obama Had to Waive HIPAA in Orlando:

"Over the last two decades, the term HIPAA has effectively become synonymous with medical privacy. But guarding medical privacy was not, and is not, the only goal of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). On the contrary, HIPAA was initially enacted to facilitate the necessary flow of health information while simultaneously taking care not to compromise individuals’ rights to retain control over privileged information. Under normal circumstances, each patient retains the right to control exactly who is permitted to know his or her health information—this prevails over almost any other concern or interest. When a patient is unable to state his or her wishes, the list is limited to the patient’s spouse or next of kin. This default has long created a harsh reality in which even the long-term significant other of a patient in critical condition would receive no information—a point which became a pivotal and effective rallying cry in the struggle for and eventual triumph of marriage equality in the U.S.

So it is perhaps especially poignant that, in the aftermath of the deadliest shooting to date on American soil, at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the White House applied a unique waiver to HIPAA. In declaring the situation in Orlando a national emergency, President Barack Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell made it easier for family and friends to gain quicker access to information—the right move in such a circumstance.

That’s because the individual patient is not the only stakeholder when it comes to health information. In fact, HIPAA was specifically written to ensure public well-being—something that becomes very relevant in cases of emergency, when panicked people are waiting in a hospital for critical news."