HIPAA and COVID vaccines: What Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott get wrong
With misinformation on the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine keeping millions of Americans from getting inoculated for the deadly disease, an erroneous defense has been used to deflect questions about who has received a shot so far: that HIPAA privacy regulations outlaw such inquiries.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., was asked whether or not she had been vaccinated. In response, she replied that the question was a “violation of her HIPAA rights.” HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, was signed into law in 1996 by President Bill Clinton amid a nationwide push to digitize medical records.
“You see, with HIPAA rights, we don’t have to reveal our medical records, and that also involves our vaccine records,” Greene continued.
Greene has been an outspoken opponent of vaccines and masks, especially if they are mandated by schools, businesses, and governments. She was suspended from Twitter last Monday for her statement that COVID-19 is not dangerous for people unless they are obese or over the age of 65, and she has been outspoken in her belief that proof of vaccination, or vaccine passports, should be illegal.
Greene’s citation of HIPAA, critics say, continues a pattern of spreading health misinformation.
Cowboys Quarterback Dak Prescott similarly responded to a question about if he was vaccinated, “I don’t necessarily think that’s exactly important. I think that’s HIPAA.”
“It’s not necessarily something I’d like to share or something I’d like to promote or say ‘hey, you should, you shouldn’t,” Prescott said in an earlier interview with NBC, despite the alarming rise in the number of new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths thanks to spread of the Delta variant.
What is HIPAA?
HIPAA was created to simplify the administration of health insurance and to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in health insurance and healthcare delivery, according to the HIPAA Journal.
In its privacy rule, HIPAA does make it illegal for certain people and organizations — including health care providers, insurers, healthcare clearinghouses, and their business associates — to share a patient’s medical records without prior consent.
The law does not, however, prohibit employers, stores, journalists, and other individuals outside of the aforementioned healthcare parties from asking for health information.
“I think that the major thing for people to understand with regard to HIPAA is that it’s very specific,” Ankit Shah, a pediatrician and University of Southern California lecturer, told LA Times. “Healthcare entities have your information and are prohibited from sharing it without your consent. That’s it. That’s HIPAA.”
Is proof of vaccination illegal under HIPAA?
No. Whether vaccination status is shared is up to an individual’s discretion.
It is not a HIPAA violation for businesses to require proof of vaccination or vaccine passports because the law does not prohibit requests of information. Additionally, businesses outside of the healthcare industry are not listed as “covered entities and business associates” for whom the HIPAA rules apply to. A violation of HIPAA would only be if a doctor were to share vaccination information with a business or employer without their patient’s consent.
Vaccine passports can only be issued with the consent of the patient. When signing up for New York State’s Excelsior Pass, for instance, individuals need to accept an authorization to disclose, which obtains their consent to display vaccination status.
“The website is not provided to you by a health care provider, so, as such, you are not providing protected health information for health care treatment, payment, or operations (as defined under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA),” the authorization states, clarifying that the Excelsior Pass does not violate HIPAA.
There are currently no federal laws that prevent asking about someone’s health nor laws that prevent businesses from requiring face masks and vaccinations. In its updated guidelines, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said that employers are allowed to have mask and vaccine mandates as long as they are applied to all employees equally, with medical and religious exceptions, and medical information is stored separately from regular personnel files.
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