White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced an administrative plan at Tuesday’s press briefing that had some wondering if they’d heard her correctly, others believing that she’d misspoken, and left still others alarmed.
In outlining President Biden’s program "to get more people vaccinated," she said there would be a “targeted community-to-community, door-to-door outreach … ensuring they have the information they need on how both safe and accessible the vaccine is."
Many doubted that she meant that federal healthcare workers would actually go "door-to-door" to convince people to get the "jab," and some took to social media to compare it to the "show me your papers" era of Nazi Germany.
As Samantha Chang observed in her Tuesday Western Journal commentary, not only does this smack of being the stuff of nightmares, but it also violates federal law, specifically the privacy provision of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Yet several hours later when the president addressed the nation from the White House, he confirmed everything Psaki had told reporters. He even took it a step further and implied they would go to the homes of unvaccinated Americans with needles in hand.
“Now we need to go to community-by-community, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, and oftentimes, door-to-door — literally knocking on doors — to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus,” Biden said.
But what about HIPAA?
Signed into law in 1996 by then-President Bill Clinton, HIPAA "is a federal law that required the creation of national standards to protect sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient’s consent or knowledge," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The individuals and entities subject to HIPAA’s privacy rule include:
- Healthcare providers;
- Health plans;
- Healthcare clearinghouses; and,
- Business associates.
In short, your health information — including vaccination records — is a private matter between Americans and their physicians.
The government isn’t privy to any of it — it’s none of their business.
Chang put it a tad more bluntly: "Sending in federal stormtroopers to bang on people’s doors to check their vaccination status sounds like a violation of HIPAA as well as a gross abuse of patient confidentiality," she said.
This is concerning given the 99%+ survival rate for COVID patients. In fact, a Lima (Ohio) News reporter looked at the numbers last year and asked, “Is old age or COVID-19 causing seniors to die?”
He discovered that the median age of those who died from COVID in the Buckeye State was 80 — 2-1/4 years older than the average life expectancy of Ohioans.
This is especially alarming given that roughly 4,100 people, including children, have either been hospitalized or died after having been vaccinated for the disease.
The most recent example was a 13-year-old otherwise healthy boy from Michigan, who died in his sleep three days after receiving his second injection.
As the late President Ronald Reagan often remarked, "the nine more terrifying words in the English language are, "I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'"
Similarly, Thomas Paine once wrote that "the greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes."
There can be few causes more noble than the preservation of life, and the Biden administration has elevated the pandemic — and by extension the preservation of life — to a crisis status.
But the problem is, if you allow the government to restrict your rights in order to address a crisis, it will always create a crisis to restrict your rights.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter, who can often be found honing his skills at the range. Read Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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