<story><title>Decades-old IBM database became profitable dossier on health of 270M Americans</title><url>https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/01/ibm-watson-health-marketscan-data/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hedora</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;He started by reaching out to the biggest corporations. If they would agree to give him data on their employees’ paid medical claims, he would return to them an analysis of their cost drivers, benefit designs, and manageable risks that would give them leverage in negotiations with insurers&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;What?  Isn&amp;#x27;t this exactly the sort of thing HIPAA is supposed to ban?  What happened to doctor-patient confidentiality?  Why do employers even have that information?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>capableweb</author><text>The clues are a bit earlier in the article and the full name of HIPAA&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The financial trajectory of MarketScan was perhaps unimaginable in 1981, when a former insurance executive named Ernie Ludy founded the company. His idea was to simply collect patients’ data and parcel it out to big companies that were seeking to control costs by getting a more granular view of their employees’ health care use.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996</text></comment>
<story><title>Decades-old IBM database became profitable dossier on health of 270M Americans</title><url>https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/01/ibm-watson-health-marketscan-data/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hedora</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;He started by reaching out to the biggest corporations. If they would agree to give him data on their employees’ paid medical claims, he would return to them an analysis of their cost drivers, benefit designs, and manageable risks that would give them leverage in negotiations with insurers&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;What?  Isn&amp;#x27;t this exactly the sort of thing HIPAA is supposed to ban?  What happened to doctor-patient confidentiality?  Why do employers even have that information?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>icegreentea2</author><text>The information is supposedly de-identified. That means it&amp;#x27;s not a HIPAA violation. You can look at the HIPAA de-identification standard right over here (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.hhs.gov&amp;#x2F;hipaa&amp;#x2F;for-professionals&amp;#x2F;privacy&amp;#x2F;special-topics&amp;#x2F;de-identification&amp;#x2F;index.html#standard&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.hhs.gov&amp;#x2F;hipaa&amp;#x2F;for-professionals&amp;#x2F;privacy&amp;#x2F;special-...&lt;/a&gt;).</text></comment>