This control or power has moved to the organization. And organizations have strong profit incentives to acquire and use protected health information. The organization can use and disclose patient information in ways that affect the patient's life. The patient may or may not be told what information led to what decisions. As a result, the organization comes to have power over the patient.
Privacy is first and foremost about power.
Within our democratic way of life, individuals should be able to work through the government to achieve a balance of control between their own needs and the needs of organizations. Remember the teenager who recently gained access to her health worker parent's computer, found lists of patients and called to tell them they had tested HIV-positive. A third category is plain carelessness, i.e., sending the wrong insurance details to the wrong person. States have adopted a number of laws designed to improve security and protect patients against the inappropriate use of health information. But a review of these laws shows that these protections are uneven and leave large gaps in their protection.