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Comment by TZubiri | Hacker News Reader

Who gives a shit if Google has your medical records?

I do. I give a shit about any data any tech company has about me, and a thousands times more shits when it's very sensitive data such as medical records.

The fact that we have normalized that behavior to the point of having to explain the concept of not wanting to give out data like candy is so wild to me

"google" is made of many individuals. If "google" has your records, you don't know who has access to them - they effectively become "public knowledge" in a way.

You can imagine how your medical record could be used against you, I'm sure? For people that have suffered agressions, addiction, mental issues, these are all private but can be used against an individual in the public sphere.

I trust Google's internal user data access controls infinitely more than I do a random hospital's.

It's not a random hospital - it's your hospital. There are many governmental bodies that are there only to watch Hipaa violations, and if your data is used wrongly you can sue for damages.

Google is a private company with no oversight.

For things like this[0], the medical companies and google operating on the this data are being held to the same standard of protecting medical data as any other healthcare software. It would be the same is Google really made a "my health" app; although the article is talking about Google et al. getting medical data for research purposes, not a personal health app that would be gated behind Google's DC doors and multi-level access controls.

0: https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/google-epic-cloud-partne...

I'm no expert on these systems, but the data that's in the cloud isn't encrypted? I would've assumed that Google can not have access to the data but are giving access to server space to host it, making HIPAA violations from employees practicaly impossible? (Unless they try to get keys to unencrypt the data, but then again that's outside the scope of this discussion)

If not this is alarming, thanks for the head up

You trust a company that has been constantly struggling with keeping employees under control and preventing malicious access of user data [0] over an institution who's business model is critically reliant on the proper handling of medical information?

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-fired-employees-abusi...

Anyone with a desire for privacy who possesses critical reasoning.

Seriously, this question seems to indicate a critical lack of common sense in the poster. You don't even need to have a desire for privacy, just a modicum of risk aversion.

Here's a simple example of what can happen with your medical data: Medical data ends up somewhere like LexisNexis -> Company looks you up before hiring -> Company sees that you have a health condition that will cost them more in health insurance costs -> Company doesn't hire you because "it's not a culture fit".

Oh, you don't have a health condition right now? Well, pray you never develop one either -- your boss will probably be able to sign up for push notifications for when there's a new diagnosis for you.

It is a bit of a chicken egg problem, because with more data available the cure for that health condition could be found earlier.

Not necessarily - it could very well not help that much. These are just claims.

There are already real bias actualized on the name and gender of the applicant at the very first stage of company hiring. Late stage investigations credit reports, public court records, online social profiles can happen but rarely do. Companies focus on referrals and confirmed job history. I can't imagine more invasive investigations into health history. Secondly why are companies paying more for healthcare given a employee sickness. The point of insurance is that it normalize cost across the entire pool of people and must be regulated to not be prejudice of pre existing conditions.

> I can't imagine more invasive investigations into health history.

The point is they wouldn't be 'invasive'. Plug a name into a website, get a cost breakdown of how much health insurance would cost for that employee. Indeed will probably have that feature ready to go the day after it becomes legal/available. A few minutes of work for a relatively low-paid employee processing applications, or these days probably some sort of automated system doing the same.

> Secondly why are companies paying more for healthcare given a employee sickness.

They might not pay more for that single employee, but they will pay more overall. The insurance company, as much as it can, will look at how how much it's bringing in, and try to maximize that. So a company could find itself paying higher rates when they renew their health insurance contract.

> Indeed will probably have that feature ready to go the day after it becomes legal/available.

Conversely, it would be easy to make that kind of thing illegal, while concomitantly more open records access would reduce healthcare costs.

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