While Politifact is generally pretty good at supplying fact check information, they didn’t complete their homework assignment on this one.  The article being fact-checked by Politifact is based on a statement from the The Senior Citizens League:

The key to these changes is a massive national government computer network, which is now being created. When it is complete, your complete medical record will be available 24 hours a day to health-care workers at computer terminals in pharmacies, doctor’s offices and hospitals across the country and to government workers. … To ensure that all doctors, hospitals and pharmacies participate and place their records in the new system, a portion of the economic stimulus legislation passed in February includes stiff penalties for doctors and hospitals which do not participate. The complete lack of privacy or confidentiality that comes when millions of people can see your records and the virtual certainty of computer errors has raised concern among many Medicare beneficiaries.

PIN previously posted an article with regard to security risk of a medical records database(s) run by the federal government.  One has been operational for many years, the other is set up by the stimulus bill (page 244). In addition, the article also discloses information about another government run agency that currently does much of what the Senior Citizens League claims.

Politifact Truth-O-Meter

To briefly summarize the article, the federal government already has a massive database that contains the private medical and personal information of millions of American citizens.  Information contained within the database is easily accessed by thousands of employees.  These employees do not have to request access, or give reasons as to why access is needed.  In addition, it is very easy to snoop around the system without being detected, and many of those with access do not have full background checks completed.

The only claim that PIN questions is the statement that “millions of people can see your records”.  That may not be true initially, but it will no doubt get there if the government controls the health care industry.

You can read the PIN article,  “Private Security Risk of Obama’s Health Care Plan”, here.

PIN finds that Politifact “missed the boat” on this one.