The wonderful HIPAA laws!

If you're in the hospital and dying you better not expect anyone to come visit you! It seems our privacy is very important to the government. Thanks to the fairly new HIPAA (HEALTH INSURANCE PORTABILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ACT) laws we can expect so much privacy that hospitals can no longer even tell your friends and loved ones if you are in there without your consent or a court order. The only people they can tell are government officials! So if you are dying you can expect a call from the IRS but not your best friend. This means that if you are in an accident and breathing your last no one except government bill collectors and other people you hate will be able to see you. My dad has been in a nursing home for the past 2 years. Every so often he must go to the hospital for some procedure or another. The nurses have no problem asking me if I will consent to a life-saving procedure but they have to be screamed at to reveal his diagnosis! One time I insisted on knowing his medical condition and the nurse very abruptly replied, "I'm sorry sir, the HIPAA laws forbid revealing a patients medical condition over the phone". At the time I was living in Boston, nearly 2,000 miles from where my dad was in Florida and he has Alzheimers and is unable to give his consent. I screamed, "Fuck the HIPAA laws! Tell me my fathers fucking prognosis!!!" OK, I didn't say Fuck, I said "damn" but Fuck would have been a better word. The people at the nursing home won't even reveal his medical condition to me because of the sacred HIPAA laws. I can see myself intubated someday wondering why no one has come to see me then I'll remember HIPAA. Now we can have so much privacy we can all die alone! Isn't that swell?