Washington (AP) – The Trump Administration violates federal confidentiality laws when last month transferred Medicaid data to millions of deportment officials, California Prosecutor General Rob Bont said on Tuesday, saying that he and 19 other government lawyers were judging in this way.
Health secretary advisers Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have ordered the launch of a set of data that includes private health information of people living in California, Illinois, Washington and Washington, Colombia District, at the Ministry of Homeland Security last month, the first press press reported last month. All these countries allow citizens outside the United States to enroll in Medicaid programs that pay their costs using only taxpayer state dollars.
Unusual sharing of private health information, including addresses, names, social security numbers, immigration status and claims for participants in these states, was released to deportation staff when they accelerated their efforts to apply throughout the country. The data can be used to assist the Ministry of Homeland Security to find migrants in his mass deportation campaign, experts said.
Bont said the release of Trump administration data violated federal laws for the protection of health privacy, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
“This is about sailing seven decades of federal law policies and practice, which have become clear that personal healthcare data are confidential and can only be shared in certain narrow circumstances that are beneficial for the health of the public or the Medicaid health,” Bont said during a press conference on Tuesday.
The Trump administration tried to arm the deportation staff with more immigrants data. For example, in May, Federal Judge refused to block the internal revenue service from sharing immigrants with immigration and customs execution to help agents find and retain people who live without legal status in the US
Moving to strengthen the Federal Government data on the Immigrant Medicaid Ennollees Immigrant Ennollees has been launched in May when Medicare and Medicaid Services centers have announced that they will review some countries to ensure that federal funds have been used to pay for
As part of the review, CMS asked California, Washington and Illinois to share details of non-US citizens who have enrolled in the Medicaid program of their country, according to a June 6 note signed by Medicaid Deputy Director Sarah Vitolo, received by the AP. The memorandum was written by several CMS employees under the supervision of Vitolo, according to sources familiar with the process.
CMS employees tried to fight the request for sharing the security data of the inner side, saying that in order to do so would violate the federal laws, including the Social Security Act and the 1974 Privacy Act, according to the note.
The legal arguments outlined in the note were not convincing to Trump’s appointed HHS, which led the Medicaid agency.
Four days after sending the note on June 10, HHS employees direct the transfer of “Data to DHS to 5:30 ET today”, according to the exchange of an email received by AP.
HHS “aggressively decays in countries that may abuse Medicaid federal means,” agency spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement. The Agency did not provide details on the role of DHS in the efforts. Nixon also defended the legality of the release of DHS data.
“HHS works entirely within its legal authority – and in full compliance with all applicable laws – to ensure that the benefits of Medicaid are reserved for persons who have a legal right to receive them,” he said in the statement.
Dozens of democratic members of the Congress – both in the Chamber and in the Senate – sent letters to the participating agencies demanding that data sharing and that the internal security would destroy the information it had received so far. –
The screenwriter of the Associated Press Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco contributed.