No. HIPPA prevents your health care provider and insurance from abusing your health information - it has nothing to do with anyone else outside of those entities.
If you tell someone your health information and they put it on a billboard (even if you asked them to keep it private) that’s not HIPPA - if someone you know works for the local clinic and noticed you come in and looks up your record - that would be HIPPA and fines and penalties would happen.
If a clinic gives you the wrong results by accident - that’s HIPPA - but if John Doe leaves his test results on a chair and you read them - that’s not HIPPA.
The law entirely focuses on what your health provider can look at - everything has to be need to know to do your job of taking care of the patient or alternatively billing for services rendered. Use of that information gotten as part of one of those jobs then used for any other reason is a violation - what you do with your information (including - being demanded the information by anyone - even your employer) isn’t a violation.
Remember your employer can hire/fire or demand anything from you outside of some protected information (marriage, pregnancy, etc) even illegal things - you don’t have to agree to them and they can fire you - your only recourse is to collect unemployment, and ‘told to do so’ isn’t a defense against an actual illegal act. Being badgered for information isn’t illegal in itself, and if you follow some other famous cases (Making a Murderer?) you can find that children often have no understanding of how to handle that kind of interrogation resulting in them saying almost anything they think the other party wants to hear.
All of this is why it should be a platform issue to ensure under 18 have automatic legal representation in the event they are questioned by the government - any agency. We could also join the rest of the developed world in not trying children under 18 as adults under any circumstances - especially considering that we know for a fact brain development doesn’t stop for most children until the early 20’s - and even intentional acts done as a teenager don’t signal with certainty that the individual is beyond help.
I believe it’s a National accreditation, for LCSW and such. Which makes me wonder if it can be taken away from them, as social workers aren’t supposed to be evil.
Not all of them… like, you know, the family in the story? Or other families with trans kids? Or the people who vote against this fascist BS?
Yeah, because that’s the problem… fascism only appears in deserts after all… Also, Texas isn’t mostly desert, but hey, why let facts get in the way of lazy reductive thinking about what’s happening here…
I keep comparing it to groups of librarians and teachers in various states who have seen the writing on the wall and organized in advance of expected fascist policies and are ready to quit en masse/refuse to follow nonsense policy/take other action to fight back, or have done so. If you’re a social worker, how do you accept the governor just arbitrary defining things as child abuse when there’s no justification and it’s contrary to all known best practices?
So, 59% of voters voted for him, just under 5 million people - in a state that would have had over 25 million people… so, not “most” voters (though a majority) and certainly not MOST Texans by a long shot. And I don’t think he ran as a MAGA republican as that was prior to the rise of Trump. Let’s not forget that many southern states are heavily gerrymandered and voter suppression is a major issue.
Abbott has taken a hard right in the last 2 to 3 years. He used to avoid culture issues more.
This. So much THIS. The effect of the voter suppression cannot be over stated. And yes, governor is a state-wide office but gerrymandering does effect that in multiple ways.
So tired of hearing all Texans are assholes/damaged/voted for the GOP or MAGA. Not all of us by a very big margin. A lot of good people live here who did vote blue and will again. Don’t write off millions of people because a majority of voters, that is a minority of residents, voted for Abbott
ETA: hoping his move right to get the GOP nomination bites him in the ass come November
People were saying that shit about GA literally right up until the state was called for Biden, and they continued saying it until the state was called for Warnock and Ossoff! And some people still persist, despite that. Abrams changed the game here, and that can happen again in other red states, too. The fact that only just under 5 million people voted last election in a state that had over 25 million people at the time was telling. Yes, some of those people are not eligible voters, but many of them are. Voter suppression is a real problem, and is how the GOP is winning now, more often than not.
It remains to be seen how that will work out for him this time around, given the events since the last election:
The Big Freeze, Uvalde [and his non-response to other mass shootings], his border debacle, etc.
The list is very long, & Beto has lots of fodder to work with… and the Dobbs decision may well spell doom for more than one FDC candidate, and not just in Texas.
It will be dismaying to me if he wins again; if the Troika of Abbott, Patrick & Paxton doesn’t go down this year, then I don’t see them going down at all until they decide to retire or seek higher office.
Beto ought to help drive voter turnout on the Democratic side and the hard-core FDCists will, of course, show up. What ‘moderate’ Rs remain might choose to sit this one out, and Dobbs might swing Independents to the blue side.
We shall see.
Yes, and Abbott has spared no opportunity to supress the ability of people to vote.
And other things. LePage first won the office of Governor here in Maine with a measly 38% of the popular vote, then went on to veto or otherwise thwart initiatives supported by a majority of Mainers.
We’ve since enacted ranked choice voting, which I’m hoping will save us from being burdened with him again when he runs in the next election.
Blaming a whole State full of people for the elected representatives they get saddled with is kind of myopic.
Also, Texas isn’t mostly desert, but hey, why let facts get in the way of lazy reductive thinking about what’s happening here…
