HIPAA Health Insurance

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a bill that was introduced to Congress in 1996. Understanding your rights under HIPAA is very important for you and your family. HIPAA provides protection for workers and their families that is designed to enhance the portability of coverage in your policy.

It gives patients a variety of different rights designed to improve health insurance coverage. It is also designed to sustain the state's responsibility in regulating health insurance. This includes but is not limited to the state's power to provide better health insurance than the federal law mandates.

If your health insurance provided by your work or business covers your dependents or spouse, they are covered by HIPAA, as well. Additionally, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act requires the Department of Health and Human Services to adopt national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health plans, and employers. [1] The act has also permitted use of electronic healthcare data exchange. This allows your medical information to be to be transferred from one of your doctors to another so that they have all the information necessary to treat you.

Information on Title II

Title II is named; Preventing Health Care Fraud and Abuse, Administrative Simplification, and Medical Liability Reform. This part of HIPAA is designed to protect the customer against the misuse of their personal medical information. It also creates regulations that protect the health care system again fraud and abuse. Lastly, it seeks to create efficiency within the health care system by regulating the dissemination of your medical information.

With the Privacy Rule, Under the Protected Health Information regulation the Health Insurance Portability and Accessibility Act requires that any information pertaining to a patient's medical status, provisions, and payment of health care to be disclosed to that patient. Additionally, if any of this information is recorded incorrectly, the Privacy Rule allows the individual to request that any Protected Health Information be corrected. Under this rule, covered entities are requested to not only make you aware of your Protected Health Information, but to do so with every effort to keep this information confidential.

Most individuals prefer that their medical information is kept confidential. Many prefer for the information to be shared only amongst themselves, their doctors, and only a few other entities that must know. The Health Insurance Portability and Accessibility Act takes as many steps as possible to protect your privacy.

[1] https://www.cms.gov/hipaageninfo/ 9/29/2011

Call Us Now For Quotes
800-601-0942

• State Guides
• Learning Center
• Articles
• High Risk Plans
• FAQ