Your access to medical care & your right to medical privacy are at stake!

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CCHC ACTION ALERT
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DEADLINE: THIS Friday (July 27, 2007)

Your access to medical care & your right to medical privacy are at stake!

Please send an short email today!  (see sample below)

WHAT'S HAPPENING:
The federal government has proposed letting a group of government bureaucrats,
corporate executives and political appointees decide who gets to see, share, and
use your medical records.

The proposal is called the National Health Data Stewardship Entity.

Control over your private medical data would be taken out of your hands and your
doctor's hands. State legislators could no longer protect your privacy. This appears
to be an attempt to nationalize control of patient data and undo current federal law which
allows state legislators to write strong privacy laws, laws that really protect your privacy
—as you may know, the federal HIPAA "privacy" rule does not. It's also an attempt to
gain access to private data for "secondary" uses.

Your private medical information could be used used against you, to build statistics-
based rationale ("evidence") for rationing health care services. It could be used to build
comprehensive detailed profiles on you and your doctor, and used to financially penalize
your doctor if he doesn't practice medicine "the government-prescribed way." All your
medical records could be linked, shared, accessed, transmitted, disclosed, used, and
disseminated if directors of the proposed "Stewardship Entity" ruled it could be done.

Your privacy, consent and data ownership rights are critical to protecting your access
to personalized medical treatment and preventing the imposition of  health care
rationing, yet this proposal is moving to eliminate those rights!

The federal agency is asking for your opinion.  Please speak up now!

View CCHC's letter sent today to the federal government:

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PLEASE SEND EMAIL TODAY!

EMAIL ADDRESS: Send your public comments to steward@ahrq.hhs.gov
DEADLINE: This Friday, July 27

SAMPLE LETTER:

P. Jon White, MD
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
540 Gaither Road
Rockville, MD 20850

Dear Dr. White,

I am responding to your agency's request for public comments on the proposed National Health Data Stewardship Entity. I oppose the proposal. It does not protect my privacy, consent, or data ownership rights.

Please see the letter sent to you by Citizens' Council on Health Care dated July 21, 2007. I am in support of the CCHC letter, and share CCHC's concerns about the proposal, including the agency's failure to fully engage and inform the public in advance of the July 27th public comment deadline.

Sincerely,

Your Name
Your Address


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Citizens' Council on Health Care
1954 University Ave W. Ste. 8
Saint Paul, MN 55104
651-646-8935 office
651-646-0100 fax
http://www.cchconline.org