Even the most pro-privacy of us can sometimes get flummoxed if forced to plumb the depths of HIPPA-related privacy standards when it comes to sharing medical information.
Boss: “What do you mean I can’t tell a lunch room joke about Jane having a hangnail last week?”
Lawyer: “You just can’t. Get used to it.”
HIPAA — the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — is a federal law passed in 1996 that created national standards to protect the privacy and security of individuals’ health information.
If its strictures can be annoying, now is not the time to be particularly annoyed by them. The assault on our privacy is escalating at all levels. We need to do everything we can to protect it from assault by everyone from online scammers to legitimate Big Tech social media that will do anything they can to know everything they can about our consumer habits and our finances.
And we need to do everything we can as well to stop government at all levels from snooping everywhere and breaking into our private affairs like the collective common crook government sometimes is.
Our health records are, by law, private. We applaud anyone who works to keep them that way.
Yes, we fully realize that California Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Banta are probably — OK, certainly — a bit trigger-happy when it comes to suing the federal government in this time of Washington, D.C.’s ongoing assault on blue-state California policies.
But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t legitimate reasons to push back in order to protect Californians. And so we applaud Bonta for on Tuesday leading a coalition of states that filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration for sharing Medicaid — what we call Medi-Cal — recipients’ health data with immigration enforcement agencies.
“Bonta cited news reports that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services granted what it described as ‘unfettered access’ to individuals’ health records,” Sharon Bernstein reports in the Sacramento Bee. “He said the action violated privacy laws and long-standing practices separating Medicaid information from law enforcement.”
“I’m sickened by this latest salvo in the president’s anti-immigrant campaign,” Bonta said in a statement. “We’re headed to court to prevent any further sharing of Medicaid data — and to ensure any of the data that’s already been shared is not used for immigration enforcement purposes.”
The current White House is certainly determined to carry through on its campaign promise to get tough on illegal immigration and to deport millions of people. Trump won the last election fair and square and he will work hard to do what he told voters he would. But that doesn’t mean that in doing so he and his administration have the right to break the law in order to enforce American immigration regulations. The lawsuit also names Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. It was filed in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of California and 19 other states, noting that “the administration changed its privacy policies without going through the process of holding hearings or announcing changes in its regulations,” the Bee reports.
“In June, 2025, the federal government’s policy of keeping State Medicaid agencies’ healthcare records confidential abruptly changed, without notice, opportunity for public input, or reasoned decision-making,” the complaint filed by the 20 states says.
We hope the suit prevails and that medical privacy is restored.