Providing for consideration of H.R. 4157, Health Information Technology Promotion Act of 2006
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 4157, HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PROMOTION ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - July 27, 2006)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentlewoman. The great Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, used to say that, ``In dreams begins responsibility.''
There is a dream here that we can place all of the medical records of all Americans online, that can have an IT world where for the sake of patients we can move medical information across hundreds, thousands of miles to save the patient's life. And that is great. That is a great dream. But that dream will replace something that exists today, which is that when each of us goes in to visit a physician, when our family member's private medical records are inside a cabinet with a nurse that has a key that can open that drawer and pull out your family's private records, that you have confidence that that physician, that that nurse is not going to tell everyone else in town what the secrets are of your husband, of your wife, of your child, of your mother or your father, that there are protections, that privacy is sacred, that your physician is a privacy keeper and not a data mining information seeker.
As we move to this new era where information is being abrogated by medical insurance companies, HMOs, medical consultants, medical data mining companies, that we build in at the beginning of this era the privacy protections, the guarantees that each individual's family has a right to say, ``I don't want my family's psychiatric records, I don't want my child's medical records, I don't want this information, mental health, prescription drug records or other personal medical data put online without my permission. I just don't want it spread around without my permission, without my family's permission.''
So I went to the Rules Committee, and Congressmen Kennedy, Emanuel, Doggett, Capps, we requested that we have that debate here on the House floor, and the Republican leadership said no. No, we are just going to listen to the insurance industry. We are going to listen to the HMO industry. We are not going to allow a debate on medical privacy on the House floor as we move to this new era.
And I will tell you something, this is about as serious an issue as people can imagine affecting their family, and there are 84 million good reasons why we should have this debate: Because 84 million is the number of times over the last 2 years we have seen the compromise of the financial records of American people, from the ChoicePoint scandal, these you can go right down the whole line. But now we have the big enchilada, and that is the medical records of people's families.
And, by the way, this is not an issue that divides along Democrat or Republican lines, liberal or conservative lines. It polls out at over 80 percent of all Americans that want the right to be able to protect their own personal medical records.
So what has happened then? Well, what has happened is the Republican party is ignoring the fact that it polls out at 80 percent Democrat and Republican. And what they decided to do is to side with the insurance industry, side with the HMOs who want to use our personal medical records as a product, as something that allows them to go through and to identify useful information for the insurance industry, for HMOs.
William Butler Yeats once said that, ``In dreams begins responsibility.'' That should happen here on the House floor today. But the Republicans are abdicating that responsibility. They are saying, let's give the HMOs, let's give the data miners, let's give these consultants, let's give these insurance companies what they want now, and we will come back and revisit the privacy issue after there is a catastrophic compromise of privacy affecting millions of American families. That is not exercising the responsibility that should be exercised. Vote ``no'' on this rule. Vote ``no'' on this bill.
http://thomas.loc.gov/