Hollywood actress and activist Glenn Close told The Daily Caller that the federal government’s goal of building a national Electronic Health Records system poses “a danger” in terms of privacy.
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“I think there is a danger actually. I think somebody should have total control over who sees records like that and who doesn’t because I still think there’s a big stigma about hiring someone with mental illness or even what kind of insurance they can get,” she told TheDC after delivering the keynote address with her sister Jessie, who lives with bipolar disorder, at the Mental Health HOPE Symposium on Wednesday. (RELATED: Close: ‘We lack eloquent leadership’ in politics [VIDEO])
“With a kind of post-Watergate, everything must be revealed — yes, I think that is a concern.”
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, “the goal of achieving widespread adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records by 2014 is established in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 (HITECH), part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.”
The HITECH Act “directs the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to administer an incentive payments program that will make available significant bonus payments to eligible health care providers who adopt and demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health records (EHR).”