Print edition: 
U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp told a Wichita Republican group Friday that the federal government will be digging into everyone's private medical records to implement the Affordable Care Act.
But the Department of Health and Human Services says the proposed risk database won't be linked to personally identifiable information and is much the same system the government has used for years to balance risk in the Medicare program.
The risk database is part of a regulation proposed to help the government determine payouts it will make to insurance companies based on the risk generated by the patients they cover.
The idea is to penalize companies that try to cherry-pick healthy populations and reward companies that cover those who are at greater risk of becoming ill.
The issue sets up a national clash between two former Kansas rivals: Huelskamp, a Republican and former state senator from Fowler; and Democrat Kathleen Sebelius, a former Kansas governor and now secretary of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration.
They find themselves on opposite sides of the privacy issue now, with Sebelius' agency supporting medical data collection and Huelskamp trying to block it.
In Kansas, Sebelius strongly opposed former attorney general Phill Kline's efforts to access medical records of abortion patients. Huelskamp backed legislation to allow any county or district attorney to obtain medical records if there's probable cause to believe an abortion was performed illegally.
In his speech to the Republican Pachyderm Club, Huelskamp called Sebelius "my favorite former governor, favorite in terms of being former, let me be clear."
Huelskamp said, "The regulation proposed by Kathleen Sebelius and this administration... would require the assembly of a national database of all of our health care records."
He said he is trying to get an amendment passed in Congress to shut off funding for the database.
"The raw claims data, quote unquote, is what they're going to take in," he said. "They are putting together in this regulation a national database for every single American because they're going to determine under Obamacare whether you are a healthy individual or a sick individual.
"The only way you do that is you make that determination individual by individual."
Not exactly, according to a statement by Steve Larsen, director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at HHS.
On the agency website www.healthcare.gov, Larsen said HHS will only collect aggregate data that will not be traceable to the individual policy holder or patient.
HHS "does not propose that states collect personal data such as name, Social Security number or address for the risk adjustment program," Larsen wrote.
The rule itself says states would "provide HHS with de-identified claims and encounter data" for risk adjustment.
HHS "will not require states to collect your medical record or information that identifies your doctor; nor would the federal government collect this information," Larsen said in his statement.
The period for public comment on the plan is open through 10:59 p.m. Monday.
To file an online comment with HHS on the proposed rules, go to www.regulations.gov and, in the search box on the home page, search docket number HHS-OS-2011-0022.
