Also, as someone who works in the Pharma advertising space, trust me, HIPAA doesn't matter when private non-healthcare companies (read- entities that fall outsi

Also, as someone who works in the Pharma advertising space, trust me, HIPAA doesn't matter when private non-healthcare companies (read- entities that fall outside the regulations) are able to hoover up so much personal information that anyone who wants to cobble together your profile can. And again, at it's core the issue is that the US government wants to be able to access as much information about as many people as possible in order to "freedom" or something. It's the reason nobody has been able to pull back the "War on Terror" era civil rights abuses everyone gleefully ran towards. There's not enough political will because everyone wants to fight about gay beer and bathroom usage and not esoteric ideas like "government overreach as it exists to benefit the 2-party system, and not as an attempt to punish the other party for doing what your party is doing now that it's in power".