The U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) aims to provide American workers and their families with the chance to transfer and continue their health insurance coverage in cases when they change or lose their job. People have conflicting opinions about this law. Here are some highlighted advantages and disadvantages issue about HIPAA.
The Top 3 Pros of HIPAA
1. Personal Privacy
Personal privacy is strictly important to all people. That is why HIPAA has made strict provisions to allow the person to control his/her own personal medical history and any other related and sensitive information. The provisions allow the person the right to access and correct his/her information and even clearly state on how or to whom the data should be disclosed. For this reason, it improved the protection and unnecessary sharing of personal data.
2. Pre-existing Norms
HIPAA prevents any kind of discrimination based on genetic conditions or certain stated health factors of a person. It also considered the pre-existing conditions of the company where it allowed including health issues and treatments for the previous six months and no further. And also if that kind if conditions do exist, coverage can 12-18 months delayed only.
3. Simplification and Portability
To the People. HIPAA aims to simplify the entire process by giving the people greater flexibility and definite rules while expanding the coverage base. This act provides people with better support to change their healthcare coverage. The prior policy that the people have had may limits or removes the exclusion period.
The Top 3 Cons of HIPAA
1. Costs and Labor Increased
To keep everything in order, HIPAA put up and hired business that manages the healthcare and the technology such as computer and software that will be used to keep the data privacy secured. And this includes increase of paperwork for health related professionals such doctors. All of this will result to the increase of the cost and labor to the government and concern individuals.
2. Restrictions and Misinterpretations
The HIPAA privacy rules often come in the way during emergency situations such as private information can be share only to certain entities and for a short period of time. And any misinterpretation of the act may slow down the passing of information.
3. Electronic Format
This act urges widespread use of technology and electronic formats to store, process, and share the data. Probably, those systems need a huge spending and considerable maintenance costs to keep it going. These kind of medium is always prone to attacks the security measures that is why it is strictly need to be constantly updated to keep all the data secured against unauthorized used, access, stealing and corruption.
HIPAA was approved and passed by the U.S. Congress for the benefit of consumers, and as you can see, the provisions and safeguards of this act have been extremely helpful for everyone. Certain negativity may happen when various changes to the Act have brought in to, but the advantages still outweigh its disadvantage. The constant efforts to bring in changes to the act make it more useful and stable for everyone.
