Throw Another Scandal On The Barbie...IRS Sued Over Improper Access To Tens of Millions Of Health Records

Via TMI3rd, why, people would be nuts to worry about big government.

The Internal Revenue Service is now facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges.

According to a report by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed HIPAA-covered entity in California is suing the IRS, alleging that some 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by 15 IRS agents. The personal health information seized on March 11, 2011, included psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data.

"This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power by several Internal Revenue Service agents," the complaint reads. "No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search. IT personnel at the scene, a HIPPA facility warning on the building and the IT portion of the searched premises, and the company executives each warned the IRS agents of these privileged records," it continued.

You know, maybe we need to put the whole ObamaCare thing on pause.

Meanwhile, I'm off to update my Scandal Scorecard. I think we have a new leader.

*I changed the headline from "released" to "accessed" to better reflect the story. Thanks to Comrade Arthur for the suggestion.

posted by DrewM. at 12:26 PM

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