MEDICAL PRIVACY: Proposed Law Would ‘Destroy’ Personal Privacy

      "The U.S. Congress is about to pass a law that would destroy the last vestiges of personal privacy by allowing banks, brokerage houses and insurance companies to swap information revealed on your checking, credit card, loan and other financial accounts," and that "would preempt state laws preventing insurance companies from revealing intimate information about your medical records," Los Angeles Times contributing editor Robert Scheer writes. He notes that under the law, "information can be swapped without restraint among the various affiliates of a conglomerate without obtaining explicit permission of the customer," so that a check written for a surgery or a prescription drug on an account at a hometown bank "would be common knowledge to all of the company's far-flung local agents." He concludes that "there is a glaring need for the adoption of privacy protections to block ... technology at the point where it intrudes, unwanted, into your personal life" (Scheer, 7/13).