"Better information means better care"

[TheOstrich]

Had your leaflet through the door yet?

If you haven't (it's a .pdf file):
http://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/up ... -01-14.pdf

I think the title's wrong. What they should have called it was:

"Better information means, if you choose not to opt-out, we're (possibly in the future) going to be selling your private medical records to insurance companies and other interested parties"

And don't be taken in by the vague blandishments that, if they do make your information available to other parties, your personal information will be protected from being linked back to you. Because three of the five indicators they're going to use to identify any given medical records are your postcode, your date of birth, and your gender.

(And how many male Ostriches do you think there are born on the 1st April 2000 and residing at SW1A 2AA? (That's No.10 Downing Street, BTW). Precisely!!)

Article from yesterday's Gruniad:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014 ... panies-buy

Stung, the NHS have denied the insurance selling angle today:
http://www.england.nhs.uk/2014/01/20/guardian-story/

I'll leave it up to you whether you believe the Guardian or the NHS .....
(I'll not even mention the DVLA .....)

[KateLMead]

Another nail in their coffins. This possibility was mentioned when Labour were in power.

[Workingman]

Hmmm, I thought that the Data Protection Act was, er, protecting me from this sort of thing.

Those data are mine, not the NHS's, and it is for me to give them permission to use them, not for NHS to appropriate their ownership in order to sell them to the highest bidder.

I feel an e-mail to my MP coming on, asking for clarification.

[cromwell]

This was always going to happen; you could set it to music and sing it. Selling your data will "help defray the cost of keeping the information", will "benefit the NHS" and provide "a cost efficient service" that will "help hard-pressed taxpayers".
All cr*p, imo.