ENCROACHING PRIVACY RULES

Whenever you go to a hospital, doctor, dentist or pharmacy these days, you get a fresh batch of privacy notices and you have to sign an acknowledgment that you have been handed the documents. This is one more case where the cure seems worse than the disease.

Aside from a normal desire to keep people from knowing about your personal affairs, there are good and sufficient reasons for tightened security. The main reasons are drugs and AIDS. If a stranger overhears you getting prescription drugs, he or she could lie in wait and rob you of the drugs as you leave the building. And anyone with AIDS or the HIV virus would want to keep it confidential to avoid potential discrimination.

So, for example, a customer at a drugstore may be ushered over to a private booth for a discussion with a pharmacist. And details of ailments and medicinal purchases must be closely held. That makes perfect sense.

But once the bureaucracy gets into the act, paperwork proliferates and people in the health care business must scurry around to draw up and distribute the new documents. Ask them about it, and you’ll probably be told that it is necessary – and also that it’s a pain in the neck. And when you call a hospital to learn the condition of a friend or relative, you may have a terrible time getting an answer. You may be told that the hospital can’t confirm that the person has been admitted as a patient.

Maine is said to be lucky. It already had strict privacy regulations. People in states less particular are having still more trouble getting used to the new rules.

The new system may have gone past the point of its maximum benefit. But its intentions are good and often useful. The only advice might be to see it nostalgically, as a rare place where personal privacy has been preserved.