Besides the various reasons for opposing the policy of National Health Insurance (NHI), one that appears to have slipped under the radar arises from the significance of the Health Patient Registration System (HPRS), as reported in The Mercury of August 5.
Nicholas Crisp, deputy director-general for the NHI, states that the contracting units for primary health care will require private health providers to log their patients’ details onto the national digital health system. This, Crisp boasts, will enable medical history and treatment to be captured wherever they are in the country by any treating physician.
That means the privacy of one’s medical health record can be accessed by a bureaucrat. It means the private relationship of a patient with his or her doctor is violated. It also facilitates the state’s capacity to spy on citizens’ private lives. Is that not a violation of Section 10 of the Bill of Rights—respecting and protecting the dignity of the individual? Section 14 regarding the privacy of a person is also infringed upon.
The more a government seeks to make citizens depend upon it, the greater their loss of independence and freedom. That is how socialism stifles autonomy, initiative, enterprise and liberty.
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