Health Care Reform You Can Believe In!

One word.

HIPAA.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.

"The Office for Civil Rights enforces the HIPAA Privacy Rule, which protects the privacy of individually identifiable health information, and the confidentiality provisions of the Patient Safety Rule, which protect identifiable information being used to analyze patient safety events and improve patient safety."

Don't get me wrong. I don't have any problem with the policy itself. I think it was good legislation.

What I have a problem with is being required to sign a fucking HIPAA form every time I visit my doctor or pick up a prescription!

I'm almost 54 years old (birthday is September 16th...shop early, shop often!), I could wallpaper a Rodeo Drive mansion with the HIPAA forms I've had to sign in the past 13 years!

You want to reform health care? Want to reduce paper work? Want to streamline the process? Reduce financial costs and environmental impacts?

CREATE A FUCKING SPREADSHEET!

Here is how my RADICAL, LIBERAL, SOCIALIST PLAN would work.

I visit my doctor and I sign a HIPAA form.

My name, date of birth, SSN, is sent via a secure IP connection to The Office for Civil Rights. They log the information and send me a wallet sized card with a hologram, a mag stripe and a bar code saying I am now exempt from ever having to sign another fucking HIPAA form!

This is not rocket science. It's a fucking Excel spreadsheet. First Name. Middle Name. Last Name. Date of Birth. SSN. Five fucking columns. Log it, print it, send me a card, we're done.

Why is this so difficult?