Transgender bill sparks concerns over patient privacy
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF)- A bill concerning the future of transgender care in Tennessee is stirring controversy.
“Do you think that those decisions will stop with trans people? I’ve got a bridge to sell you. This is absolutely about control.”
Callaghan Rudd is a community activist who is passionate about issues affecting the Chattanooga transgender community.
Rudd believes that Tennessee House Bill 754, sponsored by Representative Jeremy Faison of Cosby, is a threat to the trans community.
That bill would require clinics who perform gender transition surgeries to also perform detransition procedures, and require insurance companies involved to cover both kinds of procedures.
It also would require clinics and insurances to report the occurrence of these procedures to the Tennessee Department of Health, who would then record various statistics into a database.
This, according to Rudd, raises serious concerns about patient privacy.
Rudd said, “Asking anyone watching to imagine every private sexual health conversation that you have had with your doctor and then imagine that those sexual health decisions being published in a list with your contact information where you live, along with any behavioral or neurological health decisions or conditions that you have? That is what’s being proposed.”
Representative Faison, during his presentation of this bill last week, said that the HIPAA rights of patients would not be violated.
He said that he believes it is in the state’s best interest to collect this data.
Rep. Faison said, “We have worked with the AG‘s department to make sure what we’re doing is HIPAA compliant. Also, it is very important for state legislatures all across America to collect data that’s HIPAA compliant. We have to know what’s going on like with any other medical condition we keep track of.”
Rudd says they are not convinced that the data will be secure.
Rudd said, “Trans people aren’t the only people that I can imagine, “Hey, you know there might be people out there who don’t agree with what I’m doing or who I am, and I don’t necessarily want the whole world looking over my shoulder and saying, “I don’t like that. Let me go tell this person that I don’t like that.”
The bill is set to hit the Tennessee House floor next week, and is still working through Senate Committee.
