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Surely making everyone's health data public is a fair price to pay to allow regulations on smoking.

hcurtiss 6y ago
Smoking regulations can be substantiated with studies that do not rely on anonymous public health surveys.
fennecfoxen 6y ago
okay real talk is this (a) a serious suggestion that health data privacy should be eliminated to buy us a regulation that we already have, or (b) sarcasm? because I'm leaning (b) on principle from my own analysis of the tradeoff but there aren't powerful sarcasm flags in this post that I see, nor is there much in the way of arguments to convince me
- djbebs 6y ago
  Not OP, but scientific conclusions need to be verifiable, especially if they are driving policy. IMO you'd need a very good reason to keep any data related to such studies secret, and thats only if the data being kept secret isn't meaningful to the reproduction and verification of the results. Knowing who is X data point is most certainly relevant to independently verifying whether or not the data of the study is accurate, so i have a very hard time seeing how that should be kept secret.
jimbob45 6y ago
Most Americans don’t realize HIPAA is less than 25 years old. They’ve never thought about why it might not be in their best interests or why their lives might be better without it. The typical counterargument is that insurance providers would maliciously charge higher based on what they see. However, that’s silly since they already have that data today.
NoOneNew 6y ago
Because there are no regulations on smoking? What would showing off private data do? Put a minimum age on smoking? Stop it from being advertised to minors? Ban ads in a majority of media? Put health warnings on packages? Put high taxes on cigarettes? Oh wait, we already have that. Short of prohibition, what new law do you want at the price of health data privacy? Health data is pretty much our last legally appointed sacred data point in the US and it's already weak enough as is. HIPAA is great and all, but it's still not enforced that great. At that since we are decriminalizing weed and alcohol prohibition didnt work... no. Everyone's health data is not a fucking fair price to pay for your short sighted emotional knee jerk.

Smoking regulations can be substantiated with studies that do not rely on anonymous public health surveys.

okay real talk is this (a) a serious suggestion that health data privacy should be eliminated to buy us a regulation that we already have, or (b) sarcasm? because I'm leaning (b) on principle from my own analysis of the tradeoff but there aren't powerful sarcasm flags in this post that I see, nor is there much in the way of arguments to convince me

djbebs 6y ago
Not OP, but scientific conclusions need to be verifiable, especially if they are driving policy. IMO you'd need a very good reason to keep any data related to such studies secret, and thats only if the data being kept secret isn't meaningful to the reproduction and verification of the results. Knowing who is X data point is most certainly relevant to independently verifying whether or not the data of the study is accurate, so i have a very hard time seeing how that should be kept secret.

jimbob45 6y ago

Most Americans don’t realize HIPAA is less than 25 years old. They’ve never thought about why it might not be in their best interests or why their lives might be better without it. The typical counterargument is that insurance providers would maliciously charge higher based on what they see. However, that’s silly since they already have that data today.

NoOneNew 6y ago

Because there are no regulations on smoking? What would showing off private data do? Put a minimum age on smoking? Stop it from being advertised to minors? Ban ads in a majority of media? Put health warnings on packages? Put high taxes on cigarettes? Oh wait, we already have that. Short of prohibition, what new law do you want at the price of health data privacy? Health data is pretty much our last legally appointed sacred data point in the US and it's already weak enough as is. HIPAA is great and all, but it's still not enforced that great. At that since we are decriminalizing weed and alcohol prohibition didnt work... no. Everyone's health data is not a fucking fair price to pay for your short sighted emotional knee jerk.