HIPAA: Helping Millions in Millions of Ways

Since the dawn of time, the biggest concern of all organisms was simple: survival. It has gotten easier since then, with millions of hospitals across the world for people to use. However, people have not always been able to use those safely. Whether it was a monetary or privacy concern, people worried until the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Commonly shortened to HIPAA, it has helped millions in numerous ways (Harmen 1). HIPAA helps members of the workforce and their families by keeping their health information safe and by helping them to easily get and keep affordable coverage.
HIPAA protects health information to help with the decline of health care fraud and abuse. Health information under HIPAA is completely confidential (Government of California Department of Health Care Services 1). If the information if classified as “individually identifiable health information,” it is protected under HIPAA. As the name implies, this information is information that easily gives away the identity of information’s owner. This includes any info of of a person’s physical or mental condition at any point in time or their health care provisions. In addition, the payment for said services is classified as “individually identifiable health information.” There are currently two ways for “individually identifiable health information,” to be classified as “de-identified,” again implying that there is no reference to the owner of said information. Those two ways are as follows: “... 1. a formal determination [is made] by a qualified statistician…” or “...2. the removal of specified identifiers of the individual and the individual’s relatives, household members, and employers is required, and is adequate only if the covered ent...

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