In California, efforts to reduce health disparities raise privacy concerns

The Sacremento Bee reports:

California’s health insurance exchange wants to collect and use data on a raft of sensitive customer information, from race and ethnicity to sexual orientation and gender identity.

How officials will tackle the task without running afoul of privacy laws remains an open question. A policy on collecting demographic characteristics – potentially far more than currently reported in doctor’s offices and passed along to the government – has yet to be developed.

But the goal, foreshadowed in contracts between Covered California and 11 participating insurance companies, is “health equity” – reducing the increased burdens of illness experienced by select populations relative to others.

Exchange officials want to make sure that one racial group doesn’t have a higher rate of infant mortality than another, for example, or that women don’t die disproportionately of certain illnesses.

The government that's big enough to give free health care : is big enough to not respect your privacy.