LA Times: California’s Obamacare exchange to collect insurance data on patients
LA Times: “California’s health insurance exchange wants to know why you got sick this summer.
With 1.4 million people enrolled, the state-run marketplace is embarking on an ambitious effort to collect insurance company data on prescriptions, doctor visits and hospital stays for every Obamacare patient.
Covered California says this massive data-mining project is essential to measure the quality of care that patients receive and to hold health insurers and medical providers accountable under the Affordable Care Act.”
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“But the recent national debate over bulk collection of phone records has highlighted the public’s wariness about the government amassing vast amounts of personal information.
‘There is potential for so much public good, but there is a greater public good in protecting privacy and security,’ said Michelle De Mooy, deputy director for consumer privacy at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington. ‘I think asking permission is absolutely integral. It is not the state’s data.'”