Belly- It has cost over $2 Billion dollars, I believe this started 10 years ago so who was in power then.

Armchair Critic The xrays etc could just as easily be emailed to a doctor.

The Government want people in it so have made it opt-out you are in it unless you opt-out and you only have 3 months to get out after that bad luck.

Any money bet, all politicians will not be in this database.

Hey Philip S,
What could they spend 2 billion dollars on? (Thinking outloud)

I think realistically there's no avoiding a digital health record in the long run.
They'll just make it mandatory from the time we're born.

I also do think that with it comes the potential for a greater more efficient level of care as we move forward.

But I most certainly share everyones concerns about missuse of data.

From simple things, like if you're interstate a need to visit a gp for something simple like a flu; and not needing that gp you may never see again have access to medical information that isn't relevant;

To ensuring an incumbent leader can't access medical records of rich people with ill-health and offer them fast track on organ transplants for political contributions to stay in power.

- From one end of the spectrum to the other there's a million ways this info could be misused.
- We need to foolproof it -

I think I might opt out too.
The more of us that do, the government will be more likely to address our concerns.

Dear Philip,

«Yuyutsu Quote "No doctor can enter your medical information unless you give them your medicare number." In your case it's not the doctor you have to worry about it is the pathologist etc that do the tests.»

No, they too do not get my medicare number, I pay the bills and that's the end of it.

What I do need to worry about is my so-called "private" health insurance, because they wouldn't let me have a policy without my medicare number: I only have this to cover for hospital stay because hospital beds are very expensive, but I would never claim on any medical items because they go through medicare and I refuse to receive even a cent from government.

Yuyutsu - Highly unlikely unless you are Osama B. L. or someone like that but if they really wanted to find out who someone was even not knowing the medicare number they could very simply do it.

1 Someone went to the doctor on this day for a pathology service there will be a record of who the doctor was.

2 Go to the doctors surgery look at the visits for that day easily narrow it down to some people would not be hard to find it was you.

3 The doctor or a nearby business has a security camera you will be on it.

Armchair Critic - Personally I think it could be a good thing especially for elderly BUT tens of thousands have access to it and the FBI, CIA, NSA have all had data stolen and been hacked the risk for younger people with many years to live is far too great.

Just on the news, 1.5 million health records compromised on Singapore's health data base; seems someone hacked it; the potential in any such system for blackmail is enormous.

I just read an article recapping the fiasco of the filing cabinets containing top secret documents that were discovered in a Canberra just before they were to be offered up for auction. There was some stammering about ‘human error’, a secret enquiry by a member of the Public Service responsible for the stuff up, and if anyone was held to account we will never know - although we can guess that nothing happened.

The point of this article was: can we trust the same sort of idiots who sent government secrets to a junk shop with our medical records on their data base, as we are being asked to do?