Big Brother goes to the Doctors
The latest step toward this Authoritarian's wet dream is the placing of all our of health care records into an enormous central database, accessible by NHS staff up and down the land. Why? Fuck knows.
CF fails to see why a doctor in Cornwall, or Yorkshire, might wish to read his medical records, but then it must get boring just counting your money and planning yet another extension to the surgery.
And, doctors have warned, this is being done - surprise, surprise - entirely without our consent. Apparently, the Government is so keen to rush this into being, before they're consigned to the dustbin of history, that they are not, shall we say, being overly diligent about whether patients want their own records included or not.
Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the BMA, writes in a letter to Ministers:
"The breakneck speed with which this programme is being implemented is of huge concern.
"Patients’ right to opt out is crucial, and it is extremely alarming that records are apparently being created without them being aware of it."
Alarming, yes. Surprising? Not at all. When has this government ever cared about what we, their employers, want? When has this government ever worried about our rights as individuals?
Still, there's a small light at the end of the tunnel.
As of April this year, the Data Protection Act grows much sharper teeth. The fines for losing or misusing data about real people will be dramatically increased. Up to half a million quid per transgression. Tee hee.
So, when a junior civil servant inevitably leaves a laptop (the one we bought for him) on the 5:15 train home, with all of our medical records unencrypted on it, imagine the fucking size of the class action we can bring against the NHS and against the Government.
We'll be rich!
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