{"id":9758,"date":"2021-06-13T11:42:52","date_gmt":"2021-06-13T15:42:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=9758"},"modified":"2021-06-13T11:42:52","modified_gmt":"2021-06-13T15:42:52","slug":"the-iron-law-and-the-national-health-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=9758","title":{"rendered":"The Iron Law and The National Health Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

We haven\u2019t talked about the Iron Law<\/a> for a while so here\u2019s an example of its action on steroids. This story is about Britain\u2019s National Health Service and their contemplated betrayal of their patients\u2019 privacy. I\u2019m an American so I see this through American eyes but I can\u2019t imagine that my British cousins see it much differently.<\/p>\n

Here in the U.S., the doctor\/patient relationship is sacrosanct and can\u2019t be pierced\u2014except under extraordinary, very narrow conditions\u2014even by the courts. It is, in fact, a crime to divulge medical information (see the HIPPA act<\/a>). The NHS, on the other hand, has a sordid history of trying to grab patient data<\/a> and sell it to third parties including, incredibly, Google.<\/p>\n

In their latest attempted grab, the NHS has directed the Kingdom\u2019s GPs to provide all their patients\u2019 data<\/a> to the service so that it can be made available to third parties for research purposes. Although the service has downplayed the significance of the actions, many GPs are alarmed and have vowed to refuse to comply. Patients can opt out (until June 23) but the program has received little attention and most are unaware of it. The Labour Party has called for a delay until patients can be informed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s classic iron law: if the data is collected, it will be abused. In this case it\u2019s worse. The data had<\/i> to be collected to provide good health care to the people providing it. It makes it even worse that others would like to grab and sell it.<\/p>\n

The U.S. and Britain have very different healthcare systems and neither side can understand the other\u2019s insistence on their system\u2019s superiority but I\u2019m pretty sure we can all agree that selling patient data\u2014whatever the reason\u2014is wrong. It\u2019s not that the NHS is malevolent; they\u2019re pursuing a noble goal but they\u2019re pursuing it with other people\u2019s property. If they want the data, the least they can do is ask.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We haven\u2019t talked about the Iron Law for a while so here\u2019s an example of its action on steroids. This story is about Britain\u2019s National Health Service and their contemplated betrayal of their patients\u2019 privacy. I\u2019m an American so I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-9758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9759,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9758\/revisions\/9759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}