This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program originally aired on April 24, 2023. To listen to this program, please click HERE.
Sam Rohrer: Well, hello, and welcome to this Monday edition of Stand In the Gap today. And a new week here of packed programming. I trust that you had a blessed weekend and were able to spend time, as we did, with some family and friends. And also the fellowship, I hope that you were able to, in God’s house yesterday with other believers. I hope that you were able to get good preaching and good fellowship and to experience God’s command to observe weekly Sabbath rest.
And I think someday I’ll do a program on the importance of the Sabbath and the rest aspect of it, it’s really important. But in these days of such monumental global change, I think it’s even more necessary to prioritize daily and weekly time to turn off the busyness of the week and focus our minds and time on the Lord and to anchor our feet in the unchanging Word of God and to have our minds renewed by the Holy Spirit. It’s important.
That being said, it’s our calling here at Stand in the Gap radio and TV and throughout our entire American Pastors Network Ministry, to come alongside you and all of those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, for the purpose of helping us all in your walk, our individual walk with the Lord as individuals or as pastors and church leaders. The critical need to connect the truths of God’s Word to the issues of the day is essential if we are all to do a good job, an appropriate job that gets the commendations of the Lord at one point when we stand before him as well done, for our purposes here on Earth, and it is to reflect the truth, communicate it, and let others know.
So anyways, well thank you for being with us today and I trust that you will be blessed today and all week. So please plan on joining us. And I would ask you up upfront, pray and partner with us financially so that our entire team can do an even better job and more comprehensively and reach more people through the communication of truth, literally around the world now in both radio and TV. And I’ll share some more on that about how literally that is in a short time.
But here’s one note, it came from a listener in, believe it or not, Cameroon, Africa. That’s right. He just sent me a note, he said this morning, I’ll just read it to you. He said, “Dear Sam, greetings to you from the rainforest in Eastern Cameroon. I hope this finds you well and the APN prospering.” He said, “Sam, I don’t get much opportunity in the force to listen to Stand In The Gap today, but I can stream programs from time to time. And I just listened to your Past Thursday’s program, The Trumpets Blowing, Is Anyone Listening? That was excellent.”
He said, “Your message here and your discourse with Leo Hohmann is so needed by the Body of Christ, so we can pray and vote righteously. As you well know, America is going to hell, it seems, in a hand basket, and we need watchman on the wall, such as yourself, to provide the clarion call.” He said, “On the trumpet,” in parenthesis with a smiley face, he said, “I pray for you and the team daily. And it’s my privilege and pleasure to support you and the work.” That fellow’s name was John. So thank you, John.
Well, today my focus is another area of major concern to all God-fearing people, and it’s an area of health and privacy. The title I’ve chosen to guide the program is this, Exposing HIPAA, H-I-P-A-A, Exposing HIPAA, deliberate deception, legalized theft. And we’ll explain that as we get into the program. My returning guest is a person who likely knows more about this issue than anyone else I’ve met, and certainly the person sounding the alarm more effectively than anyone I know. Her name is Twila Brase, president and co-founder of Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, and for the website, it’s cchfreedom.org. And with that, Twila, thanks for being with me today.
Twila Brase: It’s always great to be with you, Sam. Thank you.
Sam Rohrer: Twila, this is an area that you have been running on your daily one-minute programs, which we carry within this program. So if somebody’s listening to us right now, they’ll hear you at some point during this program. But you’ve been involved in a month-long campaign at Citizen Council for Health Freedom to expose HIPAA for what it really is. And I’m glad you are doing that because most people think this HIPAA form that they’re asked to sign prior to hospital or other healthcare treatment, must mean, well, they think it means something like health privacy assurance or something like that, but unfortunately, they are very wrong, aren’t they? So to get us going, I’d like for you to define what HIPAA actually stands for and when this act came into existence.
Twila Brase: Yes. Well, the P in HIPAA does not stand for privacy, so let me just begin by saying that. It stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. And it got put into place with the use of medical savings accounts. That’s how they got the Republicans to vote for Ted Kennedy’s bill. This is Ted Kennedy’s bill. It had a Republican co-author, but it was really the medical savings accounts that got the Republicans to do this.
And so it has some pieces in there about portability of insurance between employers or between different insurers that you have had. But there’s this huge section that really required the digitization or allowed the digitization of all of your medical record information. And so when you’re talking about HIPAA and what it means, we actually did a man-on-the-street video at the Minnesota State Fair last year, which was really interesting, all different kinds of colors and abilities and men and women, and they all believe it stands for privacy and it just doesn’t.
Sam Rohrer: And here’s my question. I watched some of that video, it was actually very good, you did a good job out there on the street. A woman on the street, Twila, you did a great job. But when and how did that act come to the point where people really do assume that P means privacy, not portability, actually what it is? So how did that come into being that most people come to think that HIPAA is an assurance of privacy?
Twila Brase: Well, first of all, because the rule, so that was the law and order that later became a rule because Congress said, “We’re going to digitize all this information. We’ve got to have a privacy law.” And then they said, “If we don’t do it, the HHS has to do it,” the federal government. The federal government did it. And when they titled it, they titled it Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information.
And then in their [inaudible 00:06:53] now online, you will see that in parentheses, they then say privacy rule. But the fact of the matter is that’s a euphemism. This is not a privacy rule. This is actually considered a permissive disclosure rule allowing all of this disclosure of your information without your consent. And that rule went into place 20 years ago this month on April 14th, 2003, that’s when it became enforced. That’s when they started enforcing it.
Sam Rohrer: Okay, ladies and gentlemen, if you’re just tuning in, we’re talking about something you no doubt have signed more than once. Been in the hospital, you’ve had healthcare, you’ve had to sign a HIPAA form, right? Take and just sign it right here. You probably thought that that was protecting your privacy. That P in that HIPAA, you thought was privacy. It doesn’t mean privacy at all. It means permission. Ah-huh. So we come back, I’m going to talk with Twila in more depth now about what actually happens when you sign that form.
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Sam Rohrer: If you’re just tuning into today’s program, my special guest is Twila Brase. You’ve been with me a number of times. And many of you have indicated to me how much you’ve liked to have Twila on this program. She is the president and co-founder of Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, and they have a website at cchfreedom.org.
Our theme today is one that I know affects all of you listening to me. You all, no doubt, and including myself, have at one time or another signed what is called a HIPAA form. When we signed that form, you were probably going to get an operation in the hospital or maybe you went to a new place for health treatment and they had you sign this form. They put it in front of you and kind of told you like answer this or else. And we’re going to tell you in the last segment what happens if you don’t sign it.
But holding that for now, the real issue is what’s this thing all about, this thing called HIPAA? Like most pieces of legislation, and I’m going to give some commentary here, and it’s based on my experience of being in state legislature in Pennsylvania for 18 years because I saw a lot of this, but I’ve read a lot of legislation. And one thing I can say is like most pieces of legislation written and passed on either the state or the federal level in particular, legislation is written in what’s referred to as legalese, not plain English.
And I say plain English because that’s actually a matter of law. A lot of your amendments to the constitution that you vote on in the spring are actually in plain English. That’s a definition that’s assigned to it and it’s because it’s easier to understand. But modern statutory law, the kind that Congress patches, that’s statutory, not constitutional law, statutory law, the law that affects us all, it is simply not written to be clear and simple. It’s written to be complicated. And it is full of intentional ambiguity. They contain, many times, lobbyists and special interest loopholes, special considerations for select special interest. They just do, believe me.
Sadly, legislation has titles chosen, well, like you’d choose an advertising slogan or a marketing gimmick designed to make people think one thing about the legislation while the truth of it may be completely opposite. And Twila kind of referred to that a little bit in regard to the bill we’re just talking about now, the act, rather.
But for those who may not agree with me and say, “Oh, Sam, come on, you’re just making that up.” Well, here’s an example. When God gave his law to Moses, did he speak in plain English? Well, it was in Hebrew. I understand, but put it in the simple terms. He spoke plainly. For instance, this is a big law. It said, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Pretty easy to understand. “Thou shalt not murder.” That’s really easy to understand. That’s short. “Thou shalt not covet.” How about, “Thou shalt not commit adultery and engage in sexual immorality,” which is what adultery means there in Hebrew?
Well, these laws were designed to be clear, unambiguous, not full of loopholes, not some bait and switch efforts designed to mislead. To the contrary. And frankly, if these laws were followed, we wouldn’t have the problems we’d now have with most onerous statutory laws and specifically, this one we’re talking about today, the HIPAA law, which is frankly in my opinion, a bait and switch law that easily violates the eighth command, the ninth command and the 10th command.
And you say, “What are those?” Well, the eighth one is thou shalt not steal. Ninth is thou shalt not bear false witness or lie or deceive. And the last one is, thou shall not covet. Covet what? Somebody else’s property. And you’ll see how that all fits in. So Twila, here we go. When people are given HIPAA form to sign, they think they’re legally protecting information. You said on the other side, it’s actually not at all. In fact, the opposite is true.
There are at least, in one segment I found 12 exceptions that are within the law that are so large you could drive a truck through them, not protecting of rights, but actually providing access to the information on that person’s health data. So if I ask you a question here, what do you think is the most onerous exception to what most people think to be privacy protection for their medical records to be just the opposite? What’s the most onerous?
Twila Brase: Well, I would have to go with the term healthcare operations. And in some consent forms it’s called business operations. And so in the rule itself and in the law, the definition of healthcare operations is about almost 400 words long. And it is a list of nonclinical, which means nothing to do with healthcare, so a list of nonclinical business operations by all sorts of organizations and companies and corporations that have nothing to do at all with your care, but they’re allowed to have your individually identifiable information for the purposes of these healthcare operations.
Sam Rohrer: Wow. Well, that’s a big one. And without going… Well, I guess basically you did answer it. It’s in there as 65 healthcare operations and you say it provides access, personally identified access to people who signed the HIPAA form, it gives that information to a whole wide range of for-profit or non-for-profit businesses. Is that what you’re saying?
Twila Brase: Well, yes, but it has nothing to do with whether they signed the form. And I think that is a really important thing that I should say here, is that the HIPAA form is its own deception. It was meant to be a deception because whether you sign the form or you do not sign the form, they are allowed, by the HIPAA rule and the law, to share your information broadly and widely, including for healthcare operations without your consent.
So getting your consent, or I mean, I’m sorry, it’s not getting your consent. Getting you to sign on the dotted line convinces you, convinces most people that this is about protecting their privacy, but this is really just all about convincing you that they are protecting your privacy when they are doing no such thing.
Sam Rohrer: That’s an incredible thing, Twila. That’s why when I made the topic here, actually, you used the theme in what you’re doing in your month long expose is exposing HIPAA deliberate deception. I took and added onto it legalized theft because in reality, they’re getting people’s personal information. And what’s adding insult to injury is the fact that they’re having people sign, making them think they are secure, when in fact they’re already legislated and they’re already going to steal their information to begin with. That’s incredible.
Let’s go on because I’m going to have you talk more in the next segment. In these list of 12 that somebody can find out, give me the top two or three or whatever it would be of that list that you would say would be the most egregious exceptions.
Twila Brase: Yeah, so outside of the healthcare operations, there are these 12 national priority purposes. And so I think the ones that I like to point to when I talk about most egregious is one of them is whenever it’s required by law. So they can share your information if it’s required by any other part of law. And then public health activities. So we experienced this in COVID, did we not? When our data was sent to the CDC for them to track everybody who had gotten the injection or not.
Then there’s the health oversight activities so that the federal government is allowed to oversee the entire healthcare system according to the way they think it should operate. And look, they pressure doctors, pressure hospitals, et cetera. And then one that’s really very interesting is just this idea that if you are dying or somebody that you know is dying, the hospital can call up a tissue donation organization who can then come in, knock on the door, you never said that they could do this. Nope. The hospital called them up and said, “Mrs. Jones is dying.” And so then they knock on the door of Mrs. Jones’s room and they want to come in to talk about taking Mrs. Jones’ organs.
And this is just so palpable to people, this idea that they’re in the midst of grieving, that somebody is dying and then this organization comes in and says, “Hey, I heard. Let’s talk about taking those organs.”
Sam Rohrer: That’s rather incredible. When you cited there, the most egregious in that list of 12 is required by law. That was number one of the 12. That’s the first one I picked at too. That’s such a unassuming altruistic, perhaps, when required by law. Well, the whole law is opening up the door for this. So, yeah. What was the second one you told me? I’m writing this down here. What’s the second one? Public health activities?
Twila Brase: I said public health activities and then health oversight activities. And then this idea that the organ procurement organizations can be called without your consent to come to the hospital. [inaudible 00:17:32]
Sam Rohrer: See, that’s an amazing one because most people who would be in a hospital dying and have somebody come in, you would think that it was because maybe somebody on that floor or in that department is so very concerned, and maybe they are, maybe they’re not. But they’re very concerned and they just thought, “Well, this is a magnanimous person who’s lying here. Would you like to donate your organs?”
But you’re suggesting that because this is in this law, the HIPAA law, and it is opening up the communication of all of the private data, that this information was facilitated to some outside company because of HIPAA, and now they’re coming in because they’re going to make money off of somebody’s organs.
Twila Brase: Well, whether or not they make money, it’s the idea that you don’t have a choice-
Sam Rohrer: There you go.
Twila Brase: … they can be called.
Sam Rohrer: There you go. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’re talking about HIPAA. You sign it, I signed it. We think it means privacy because that P in there, HIPAA, we think it’s privacy, it’s not. It means permission, if anything else. It means something else, but it’s really more permission. When we come back, we’re going to talk about what are the implications now of everybody knowing your data?
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Sam Rohrer: Again, you’ve perhaps just joining us midway through the program here, you no doubt have signed a HIPAA form at some point in your life. Been in the hospital for a new healthcare provider, you’ve been handed a form, lots of print on it. You don’t read it. I don’t read it all. I have signed the form, but I signed the form in the past before I really understood what it was. Now that’s what we’re trying to talk about today.
And for the last month, my guest today, Twila Brase, who’s the president and co-founder of Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, has been seeking to make known what really is this thing called HIPAA and the HIPAA form. And my title for the program kind of says it all, Deliberate, Deception, Legalized Theft.
Now, in the last segment, I had Twila identify some of the top and the leading exceptions, actually giving access to your and my what we think, what we thought was private health data. There are very few things more important and valuable to a person than, well, their health and maybe what they had to see the doctor about for the operations they got or weaknesses that they have. That’s all private. At least we thought it was private. And that’s the point. You see, the problems created by deceitful laws, of which this is one, this is a big one, there are many, many problems are created.
Law which is written to literally undermine constitutional and God-given rights or violates God’s basic moral law is evil law. Now you thought you had protection to your privacy issues, right? Don’t we have a right to privacy? Well, we thought, but not when the law comes and says, “Well, no, and we have access too.” And that’s what we’re talking about.
There are many books on the laws that actually do violate things. For instance, here’s one just looking at the command once I laid those out before some of them. For instance, there are laws which violate the sixth command. What’s the sixth command? Thou shall not murder. And they do it by encouraging these laws, encourage the taking of life in any form, like abortion laws. Isn’t that a law that violates the sixth command? How about abortifacients of any type?
How about laws which then permit what we might call mercy killing of any type? I’m just giving you just a sum of them. But these are laws that violate God’s law. They’re evil. There are laws, for instance, that violate the seventh command, thou shall not commit adultery, which meaning in Hebrew there, is sexual immorality in the larger sense of the word.
Do we have laws that violate that? Well, sure. Laws that permit mutilation, for instance, of an individual through the pursuit of transgender surgeries. What is that? How about the marriage of same sex couples? Oh boy, I know I’m treading on rough ground for some of the politically correct, but that’s what God says. And he says, ‘Such laws are evil.” Well, so are many other laws on, for instance, taxation, which permits the legalized theft of people’s property. And that property could be money or that property could be medical data, information that you think is yours.
And what’s even worse is when the law actually takes it from you, legalized theft, by lying or coveting that data and putting a form in front of you that you sign, that you think is protecting your freedom and your data and your property, but actually does nothing except make you feel good because they’re already taking it. So we’re talking about consequences.
So Twila, let’s get into that and build out some of the things that you just said to show the implications of this. In the last segment, I asked you about the most onerous and you said healthcare operations, which are literally business operations which provide access to individuals’ health data, whether or not they sign that form. But what are the consequences? Like, who’s getting it, what are they doing with it? How do those consequences of that harm the individual personally perhaps, or at least our concept of freedom generally?
Twila Brase: So I’m going to answer that question, but I do want… if there’s time to say something about the so-called form. So in answer to your question about the kind of harm that’s done, I think that while we’re talking about privacy here, the real issue is not privacy. That’s the word they used. But the real issue is control. And as I often say, “He who holds the data makes the rules.” That is the way it is in every surveillance society, every tyrant, they always want to know what’s happening so they can control the people.
Well, because of HIPAA, your doctors can be trapped and their decisions can be controlled. Your care can be limited and you and your doctor can both be profiled. And then actions based on the data in your medical records, the data in everybody’s medical records, all put together, actions can be taken against you using that data without you even knowing about it.
They decide not to tell you about something that you could have done to you, but they’re not going to tell you because they’ve looked at your data and said, “Nope, we don’t want to give it to her. No, nope, she’s not eligible.” And they’re just using your data and you didn’t give them permission to use your data and do that kind of profile. So that’s what can happen to people. And not only that, but there’s a lot of money being made here and you become a commodity through your data.
And so UnitedHealth Group, one of the largest health plans in the world, maybe the largest health plan, they have a data division. It’s only on health data. It’s called Optum Insights. And in 2017, their revenue was $8.1 billion. And all they do is health data. They don’t take care of any patients. All they do is health data.
Sam Rohrer: That puts it in the perspective because as you say, data is valuable for anyone who sells anything to the public or seeks to get money from anybody else, data is valuable. And so you cited one. Now before we move on to the second one of required by law, that next big exception, was there anything else in that area of consequences? I mean, are the consequences of this data, is it used to be perhaps negatively impactful on the doctor or the hospital? I mean, can it turn around and be used to leverage control over individual docs or healthcare providers as an example?
Twila Brase: Yes. And so they call it quality reporting. And so doctors, and I’ve talked about this in my book, Big Brother in the Exam Room: The Dangerous Truth about Electronic Health Records, and just the fact that the doctors and the nurses are required to report all of this data. And then the outsiders determine whether or not the care was quality that was delivered. But it’s not really quality, it’s about compliance.
It’s not about whether they listened to you or laid hands on you to give you a comforting touch or if they spent 20 minutes with you instead of five, it’s all about did the doctor, did the hospital comply with this list of things the outsiders are calling quality? Often that includes with rationing care, with not spending too much money. All of that sort of thing, the entire healthcare system is being turned against the patient, and it is the data and how it’s being used that is allowing that to happen.
Sam Rohrer: Okay, let’s go on just to keep it in sequence here. The exception required by law or for instance, health oversight or tissue donation were some that you comment on the other side. Give us some examples of consequences, not good consequences. If there are good, identified some of them too, but if they’re not good consequences, identify some of those that fall into that category. You picked up those other four items.
Twila Brase: Yeah, so when required by law, so if a state has a law that says, “We’re going to keep a registry of everybody who has cancer and track them for the entirety of their life,” then that is something that is required by law and that is allowed under HIPAA. If the state creates a long COVID registry, so they’re going to start doing surveillance like they are in Minnesota and people with long COVID, well, you aren’t going to have a choice. HIPAA’s not going to protect you because the state’s going to create this law that says that this is what they’re going to do and they’re also going to share it with the federal government as they are with the cancer registry information.
And so all of that sort of thing, HIPAA doesn’t protect you against, because HIPAA is a permissive data sharing rule. So anytime in law, anywhere where it says your data can be shared, HIPAA says, “Okay, good. It’s good to go. There’s no prohibition about that.” So that’s one of them.
The healthcare oversight activities, that’s a little bit to what I was saying before is that if the government in cahoots with the healthcare industry decides that we’re not going to give X surgery or we’re not going to do Y medication or whatever it is, and so we’re going to say in our protocols, we’re going to put treatment protocols inside the electronic medical record, the computer system, and we’re going to make sure that every doctor complies with our way of doing healthcare.
And then if they fall outside, if they make a request to go outside of these protocols, well then we’re going to track them and we’re overseeing the entire healthcare system and we can see who are the compliant doctors and who are not the compliant doctors? Who are the compliant doctors that we have to go after to get them to come into line to reeducate them on how healthcare needs to be given in this country? That’s what can happen under the health oversight activities.
There’s also, by the way, I didn’t mention these, in those 12, right? There’s judicial and administrative proceedings, law enforcement. So your data can be given for these sorts of things, individually identifiable without your consent with, you know, you don’t have a say in the matter because they have listed them as national priority purposes and that includes the military too.
Sam Rohrer: Okay. All right, ladies and gentlemen, HIPAA, not privacy, think opposite. All these things that we’re citing right now are the various extraordinary large highways that permit business, government, state government, and a whole lot more to take your data in mind and use it for their purposes, not yours.
Sam Rohrer: Well, if you were listening on your station and you caught that most recent, the one that just played the spot there, if you heard that, that was from Twila, my guest today and talking about the very topic that we’re discussing here right now. So the timing of that was perfect.
And Twila, I’m going to follow up on some things with you in just a bit. But like so many things, ladies and gentlemen, that occur under what I call the color of law, that is what the HIPAA would be. That would be the color of law. In other words, it is a piece of legislation that was passed by Congress and signed by the president, all right?
It would reflect what we would call statutory law, congressional law. But what it is doing is actually harmful. And actually causing to be done the theft of what you think to be your private data, your information, your health information. That’s your property, that’s my property. You think that when you sign the form, that you are assuring that it is protected by good government law, but it’s not. It has the color of law. That’s why I use that word color of law. The edicts from current president and last president in the last three years from the National Institute of Health, from various governors, employers, hospitals and others during and continuing as a result of the COVID tyranny. You see, they have presented major complications for people, major decisions. People were told, “You either do this or…” Big deal, but that’s important and we’ve all had to face it.
Every person listening had, in regarding to COVID stuff, had to make one or more choices, either to comply with certain edicts. And just because they came from somebody on a government level does not mean that they were lawful. And it does not mean that they were in compliance with God’s moral law. And so we, who chose not to obey some of that edict, it shows instead to make our determined based on a higher law, as in the constitution or as in God’s moral law, all right?
Well, it’s the same thing in regard to now the HIPAA forms and the request to sign or not to sign. So let’s get in and answer some basic questions here, Twila. And that is this, let me to go here first before we cover the issue of whether or not a person has to sign it when it’s put in front of that person. But this question I have for you, because I don’t know the answer to this. Do hospitals and healthcare providers have to by law put a HIPAA form in front of a patient? Or are they just doing it because they gain some benefit from it? Let’s start there. Do they have to put the form in front of the patient?
Twila Brase: Yes, they do. The rule says that they must quote, “Make a good faith effort,” to get the patient to sign it. It does not require in any way, shape, or form the patients to sign it. But now let me just be clear about the form. I would say the form comes in about five different possible. One is it’s an actual form and it just has to do with HIPAA, end of statement. Another, it’s because what the law actually requires is they get you to sign an acknowledgement statement that you have received, read or understood the notice of privacy practices.
Sometimes that statement is on a single form and that’s all that’s on the form. Sometimes that statement is embedded in a multi, multi-provision form and we call those coercive forms. Now, sometimes they’ll give you the notice of privacy practices and they’ll say, “Sign the bottom of it.” So you can see what is actually a notice of disclosure practices. So you can see all the ways they’re going to share your information without your consent, but they ask you to sign it and they consider that like, okay, now you all know. It’s probably better.
But the other thing is two electronic ones. One is you get a tablet in front of you and it won’t let you go forward if you don’t sign. And another one is you just get this tiny little thing by the desk. It’s just got a signature. And they tell you, “Oh, that’s you signing the HIPAA form.” There’s no words. You don’t see a HIPAA form. It’s just a little signing pad, right? All of those are meant to get you to sign the acknowledgement statement that you have read, understood, or received the notice of privacy practices. That is all you are signing. You are not signing a word about what happens to your data. The only thing you’re signing is that you have read, received, or understood the notice of privacy practices, which is actually a notice of disclosure practices.
Sam Rohrer: Okay, that’s important. And I tell you, one of the things that I have started to do a long, some time ago when I see that kind of thing in law, by signing this, I indicate and affirm that I have read and understood. Key language. Well, most of that I don’t understand because of how it’s written and I’m not going to do that. And a lot of the COVID shots I’ve read when we talked about that, the shots that came out, people have signed them because they were supposed to give permission, and I don’t think in many cases that actually happened, but they were supposed to. And one of the provisions in there would they understood the impact of the shot.
And I said, “Well, frankly, they won’t even tell me what’s in it. So why am I going to take and sign that I understand the implications? They won’t even tell me what the implications are.” So I did not take that shot because there’s no way that I can honestly sign a form of that type. It’s of this type we’re talking here. Now, here’s the logical question. If a person says, “All right, now after listening to this program, it does not guarantee me anything. I’m only doing it to make myself feel good.” Does the hospital or the healthcare provider who sticks a tablet in front of somebody or a form, partial or complete or whatever to sign, what if that person says, “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand this or I’m not able to sign it,” and refuses to sign it? Can that healthcare provider of the hospital refuse medical treatment then?
Twila Brase: So there’s an interesting thing about that question, is that they aren’t supposed to be able to. There used to be, and it’s in my book, I actually have the screenshot of it. There used to be a form that said, they still have to treat you. And so you don’t have to have to perpetuate this myth that HIPAA protects privacy. And for those who have donated to our organization, in two weeks, we have a special mailing coming out and it will have a picture of that part of the form that they no longer have online. Thank goodness we kept it, right, that said they still have to treat you. But also some of these little cards that you could take and you could show them, I don’t have to. You have to ask me. I don’t have to sign this. And the really important thing about this is we cannot get rid of HIPAA.
While everybody thinks it’s such a great thing, they don’t understand it. It’s really taking away the power of the doctor to treat you as a patient, as an individual. And then it’s giving all of your data to this whole pathway of people who think this is the 21st century version of oil. They have tapped into oil and they’re going to make the most of it.
So I just encourage people, don’t sign it. Do everything possible. Go to the manager of the clinic and say, “I know I don’t have to sign this. I know you have to ask me. I know I don’t have to sign this.” Only one time have I ever been turned away. But I also will say, if you are seriously, seriously ill and you need care, remember, signing it or not signing it doesn’t matter. They can share your data. So get the care you need. Stand up another time when you’ve got more power and you’re well. I mean, that’s really important. You still need to get the care that you need, but you are being violated. This whole idea of convincing you that this has anything to do with privacy.
Cross out the statement when you find it embedded in the form. Refuse to write after the word refusal. Some of them will say, “Write refuse and then sign your name.” Nope, I don’t have to do that either. I don’t have to sign one thing. [inaudible 00:38:16]
Sam Rohrer: All right, and Twila, we’re at the end of the program. Thank you so much. Good information. Ladies and gentlemen, go back and listen to the program, standinthegapradio.com or on our app. You can pick it up. Listen to this again, walk through these things. You will be more informed than 99% of the other people out there because most do not know what we went over. And then listen to this last segment. Face your decisions on what you do in the future based on that.
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