Medical Records For Sale!

        According to this government, there is nothing that can't be sold for a profit. Up until now your medical records were private, personal between you and your doctor, well now that is all about to change. Your medical records are now just another product from which profit can be made. It could influence whether you can get insurance or not, your job application, whether you can get a mortgage or not. All and sundry will be able to buy your personal medical details for their own personal gain. Another step down the road to total surveillance, your are watched, spied on and now your personal medical records are up for scrutiny. 

This from SumOfUs: 

Your medical records are about to be sold to the highest bidder.

       Starting this year, private companies will be able to buy information on us from the NHS’s new universal patient database -- including everything from mental health conditions, sexually transmitted infections and diseases like cancer -- all linked to your postcode, gender and ethnicity.

      We’ve all been opted into the scheme by the government without our knowledge. And the clock is ticking -- the government has said they will upload our data in a matter of just a few weeks. If we’re going to stop this, we have to act now.

Tell Jeremy Hunt and the Department of Health not to sell our medical records.

      It doesn’t really get more personal than what you discuss with your doctor. They know the most personal things about us -- like whether we’ve ever been depressed, had an embarrassing infection or struggled with drug & alcohol problems.

      The government claims that individuals won’t be able to be identified. However, many experts have warned that under the current plans, we could easily be singled out through simple cross-referencing of other databases -- especially if you have a rare or unusual condition. Imagine your employer finding that you might have had an abortion when you were a teenager. Or your insurance company finding out you are HIV positive. The consequences for us as individuals could be huge.

     We know that when we act together, we can bring about real change. When we fought to get High Street names like River Island and Edinburgh Woollen Mill to sign up to protect Bangladeshi factory workers, we won! Now we need to step up to defend something precious -- our right to privacy.

Tell Jeremy Hunt to stop the sale of our personalised patient data to big corporations.

Thanks for all that you do,
Martin, Hanna and the rest of us.
More Information:

NHS patient data to be made available to drug and insurance firms, The Guardian, 19 January 2014.
Price list for access to medical data, Health & Social Care Information Centre, January 2014

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