Selling Off the NHS Information

So not only has the NHS been privatised by breaking it up into so called 'Trust Funds' Jeremy Hunt now wants to sell off our medical records to the highest bidder.

Starting this year, private companies will be able to buy information on us from the NHS’s new universal patient database -- including everything from mental health conditions, sexually transmitted infections and diseases like cancer -- all linked to your postcode, gender and ethnicity.  How's that for not keeping our private information private.  And we are worried about MI5 and the FBI having access to our personal records.  Well it looks like within a couple of weeks all they will have to do is out bid everybody else who has access to a computer.

We’ve all been opted into the scheme by the government without our knowledge. And the clock is running down - the government has said they will upload our data in a matter of just a few weeks. If we’re going to stop this, we have to act now.

It doesn’t really get more personal than what you discuss with your doctor. They know the most personal things about us -- like whether we’ve ever been depressed, had an embarrassing infection or struggled with drug & alcohol problems.

The government claims that individuals won’t be able to be identified. However, many experts have warned that under the current plans, we could easily be singled out through simple cross-referencing of other databases -- especially if you have a rare or unusual condition. Imagine your employer finding that you might have had an abortion when you were a teenager. Or your insurance company finding out you are HIV positive. The consequences for us as individuals could be huge, in short a total lose of our privacy.  I don't know about you but I'm not really comfortable with the idea that anybody could find out what the medical skeletons I have in my wardrobe.

We know that when we act together, we can bring about real change. When we fought to get High Street names like River Island and Edinburgh Woollen Mill to sign up to protect Bangladeshi factory workers, we won! Now we need to step up to defend something precious -- our right to privacy.  Perhaps if we can win this one we might be able reverse the degrading of our Nation Health Service.

Tell Jeremy Hunt to stop the sale of our personalised patient data to big corporations.