US government is pushing to gain unprecedented access to your medical records – as data protections are weakening
Large datasets can be useful research tools, but current government efforts to gather medical records depend on policy and technology that falls short of protecting people’s privacy.
The U.S. government is seeking greater access to Americans' medical records, despite the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy law, which governs health information. HIPAA regulates hospitals, physicians, insurers, and their business associates, but not the health data generated outside of these entities. Even within the scope of HIPAA, vast amounts of health data can be shared, sold, or handed to the government in ways that may not be immediately apparent.
As the government pushes for domestic and international health data collection, concerns arise about the weak safeguards in place. Even when data is anonymized, it may still be at risk due to advancements in artificial intelligence, as demonstrated by a 2026 study revealing that AI can still identify individuals within anonymized datasets.
A prominent figure pushing for increased government access to health records is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has called for federal access to investigate potential links between vaccines and autism. Although scientific evidence has consistently shown no link between vaccines and autism, HHS is reaching out to state health information exchanges and asking about potential uses for vaccine research.
The expansion of prescription drug monitoring programs, which track controlled substance prescriptions, has raised concerns as federal law enforcement can access these logs with minimal oversight. Health records may flow to various destinations under different rules, and their protection becomes increasingly vulnerable once they leave the HIPAA-covered system.
While public health benefits from sharing health data, the current safeguards are insufficient to protect individual privacy in the face of modern data analytics. The government's proposed repository of tens of millions of Americans' medical records, aimed at studying vaccine effectiveness and autism, raises questions about how many states will be involved, what data will be collected, who will have access, and how it will be protected.
Written by urgent.news from The Conversation's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
