Health insurance is in the midst of a design shift toward greater financial risk for patients. Where medical cost exposure is high relative to income, the shift will increase the numbers of underinsured people. This study estimates that nearly sixteen million people ages 19-64 were underinsured in 2003. Underinsured adults were more likely to forgo needed care than those with more adequate coverage and had rates of financial stress similar to those of the uninsured. Including adults uninsured during the year, 35 percent (sixty-one million) were under- or uninsured. These findings highlight the need for policy attention to insurance design that considers the adequacy of coverage.

Uninsured or Medicaid-insured patients are far more likely to be diagnosed with an advanced stage cancer than those with private insurance, according to a new American Cancer Society study of 3.5 million cancer patients with 12 of the most common cancer types.

This survey, by EPIC and Privacy International, reviews the state of privacy in over fifty countries around the world. The survey examines a wide range of privacy issues including, data protection, telephone tapping, genetic databases, ID systems and freedom of information laws. The report finds that there is a worldwide regocnition of privacy as a fundamental human right. Many countries around the world are enacting comprehenisve data protection law to safeguard individual privacy increase. However at the same time, privacy is increasingly being undermined by technical advances and the demands of intelligence and law enforcement agencies for increase surveillance powers. There is a strong need for improved oversight and stricter enforcement of current laws to ensure that legal protections are not ignored as threats to personal privacy increase.

The 31 organizations are voicing their concerns about Google’s plan to scan the text of all incoming messages for the purposes of ad placement, noting that the scanning of confidential email for inserting third party ad content violates the implicit trust of an email service provider. The scanning creates lower expectations of privacy in the email medium and may establish dangerous precedents.

In a world where information and communication technologies (ICT) are fast becoming ubiquitous and indispensable, the ICT industry has a crucial enabling role in social, economic and human development. Deploying ICT triggers changes in behaviour and governance.

Protecting Data Privacy in Health Services Research

Any advanced technology creates new threats as well as new potentials. The Internet offers enormous opportunties, which are being exploited by communities, and increasingly also by business enterprises. It also harbours risks to the privacy of personal data and communications, as marketers seek to profile their electronic customers, and governments seek to impose themselves on people they see as miscreants. This paper describes the kinds of threats that exist and are emerging. It also outlines measures, both fair and foul, that are being adopted to counter those threats.

SURFER BEWARE: PERSONAL PRIVACY AND THE INTERNET

Privacy Self Regulation: A Decade of Disappointment

Laws: Cases and Codes : U.S. Code : Title 5 : Section 552a

Is Your Printer Spying On You?

Flood Control on the Information Ocean: Living With Anonymity, Digital Cash, and Distributed Databases

The Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 generally prohibits the interception of electronic communications, including e-mail. However, three major exceptions to the ECPA may allow the interception of employee e-mail.