Did you know that the federal government is making new rules about who can look at your personal medical records? These rules will make it easier for a wide range of individuals and groups to see your medical information -- without your knowledge.

To fulfill part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 enacted Aug. 21, 1996, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published the "Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information" in the Federal Register, Vol. 65, No. 250, pp. 82461-82829 on Dec. 28, 2000. These 368 pages run about 1,000 words per page totaling over 350,000 mind-numbing words. These regulations were scheduled to become effective last Monday, with the force of federal law behind them.

But, because the former administration didn't obey the law and submit the regulations to Congress for review, the effective date has been delayed and a new 30-day public comment period opened. You have until March 30, 2001 to let Secretary Tommy Thompson, President Bush, and your elected Senators and Representatives in Congress know your concerns.

The regulations will apply to all individuals whether your health care is paid for by you or by the government.

Americans should consider some important questions and answers about the proposed medical privacy regulations before they become law:

Will you or the government decide who has access to your medical records? Under the proposed regulations, the government will decide, not you.

Who can look into your electronic medical records -- including genetic information -- without getting your OK? Again, the government.

Will you be informed about the specifics of your child's medical condition? Maybe not!

Can I be refused medical treatment if I don't want to let my doctor release my private records? Yes.

The regulations would also make it easier for government bureaucrats to look into your medical records, again without your permission. In fact, any government agent claiming a "national priority purpose" can poke around in your most private medical details. In many cases, the government can then release your personal medical information from government files, without anybody having to ask you your permission.

The proposed regulations do allow -- but do not require -- the government to investigate your complaint. You would have to appeal to a public official if your personal privacy is illegally invaded. If government officials choose not to investigate, the lawbreakers would go free. Adding injury to insult, you won't be able to take these criminals to court; all power to sue or prosecute is reserved to the government itself.

Further, if the government does go after such a criminal, the government will keep any fines collected by the government for the breach of your personal privacy.

As physicians, we know that many patients request that certain parts of their medical history not be recorded in official records. One friend recently asked his own doctor to keep his records private. He asked the doctor if she would have any difficulty lying to the government. When she seemed somewhat reluctant, he insisted, asking, "Why not? They lie to us all the time?"

The horror tale last year of Gary McClain hits home. One morning, driving to work at the Tenneco plastic packaging plant in Beach Island, S.C., McClain was pulled over by six police cars. A local SWAT team approached him with dogs and drawn weapons, handcuffed him and took him to the emergency room of a local hospital. There he was denied legal representation, drugged and involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for two weeks.

It turned out that this happened because McClain's boss had falsely claimed that McClain was an armed and dangerous mental case. He poked into McClain's medical records, called the police and falsely told them about McClain because the boss had a gripe against McClain. These bogus psychiatric charges caused McClain to be imprisoned in the mental ward.

We suggest that you will be able to control your own private medical information only if:

1. The government enforces, not eliminates, your right to require your consent before your personal medical information can be given out;
2. You are not forced to accept a "unique health identifier" ID number for tagging and tracking your medical records electronically;
3. And, finally, if anyone, including a government official, abuses your privacy and breaks the law, you should have the right to sue that individual. You should be compensated for invasion of your privacy, not the federal government.

There is not a person or family among us who directly or indirectly does not have some private and personal health issues that he or she might not wish to share with the entire world. Such conditions could include a wide range of conditions such as mental illness, disability, cerebral palsy, retardation, herpes and genetic disorders.

Will your future education, job, mate and insurance policies be decided on the basis of possibly false information involuntarily given out under force of law? Do you want to lose control of your medical history, psychiatric profile, lab studies, diagnostic tests like CT or MRI, and finally your unique DNA structure? The government already has access to your credit records and your files at the IRS and FBI. Do you want them to also know what's going on in your heart and soul?

We hope not!

Please tell President Bush, your senators and representative to scrap these unfixable regulations and start over.

It will be up to the American people to let elected public officials, including the president and those in Congress, know what to do to protect your medical privacy.