Privacy Anyone?

In the healthcare debate, two very important points are lost in the cacaphony.

The first is Privacy, which I'll discuss not, and the second is Regulatory Reform, which I'll devote to a later post.

By the way, thanks for tuning in to my new Blog - I am a Health Insurance Agent who is standing by haplessly as our system is about to be overrun by politicians.

I'll throw in tidbits on my background as time passes, but if I did it now, you the Dear Reader would have no incentive to return.

Back to Privacy.

We keep hearing about how important it is to either have, or not have, a "Public Option" in whatever new Behemoth Health Plan (also known as Congressional Sausage) that emerges over the next few months.

Those who are not excited about the direction the debate is taking, of which I am one, should remind America that any kind of insurance, whether public or private, must rely on the Law of Large Numbers.

In lay terms, this means that the insurance company, or perhaps soon to be our infallible Government, co-op, expanded CMS, or whatever takes charge of healthcare, will need to know a few things about US - such as: How many Americans have high cholesterol? How many males age 50 are a heart disease risk? How many people are on Prozac? And so on.

Without this information, it is impossible to even begin to dispense care, much less ration it as many fear will happen.

To what ends will Big Brother obtain this information? They have already proposed onerous reporting requirements on our Docs...will it also be their job to report our private health information to some monolithic bureaucracy such as CMS?

The point is: No one know, and it's downright scary to think of what will be required of us as we embrace this kind of "change".