the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Trenton NJ, Following New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s announcement of the Excelsior Pass program which will allow people to prove their vaccination or COVID-19 status, Senator Michael Testa introduced legislation that would bar such ‘Vaccine Passport’ from being mandated in New Jersey.
“No Government entity should require their residents to carry a ‘Vaccine Passport’ around to gain access to schools, businesses, and their daily life,” Senator Testa stated. “These types of passports completely violate an individual’s right to personal freedoms, and they are a direct violation of HIPPA laws.
“The rapid erosion of individual privacy rights threatens the liberties and freedoms of every New Jersey resident,” Testa continued. “There is a balance between protecting public health without violating American Constitutional Rights. Time and time Governor Murphy has crossed the line and we must ensure he is barred from enacting ‘Vaccine Passports.’”
Testa’s bill prohibits the State, or any political subdivision of the State, from requiring a private business to confirm that an individual received a vaccination for the COVID-19 in order for the individual to be granted entry on the premises of the private business.
Does Testa just pretend to understand HIPAA laws when he speaks in public, or does he deliberately misrepresent the role it plays in vaccine passports in the name of fearmongering? Vaccine passports may be a bad idea for constitutional reasons, but HIPAA isn’t really one of them.
how so?
HIPAA governs medical providers (doctors, hospitals, insurance providers, gov’t agencies where applicable, etc.) — under it, they have to safeguard your information responsibly , they have to provide you with your medical record whenever you request, and they can only share data with other *medical providers* with your consent. A private enterprise asking you whether you have been vaccinated and potentially denying you goods and services without proof of vaccination may be an invasion of personal liberty or privacy (in that sense Testa is within his rights to raise a concern over the erosion of rights), but it is not a HIPAA violation. The FAA or TSA or whoever checking whether you have received a vaccination before you get on a flight to countries with vaccine requirements probably isn’t governed by HIPAA either — either way, as the flyer you have to voluntarily consent to sharing that data, or you will not be allowed to book the the flight or enter the country, whether it is through an electronic “passport” or presenting your proof of immunization in some other way.
The vaccine passport is just a digitized version of your immunization card — you may have to show it to get access to certain goods and services where there may be a vaccination requirement. It is kind of like how you have to show your plane ticket to board a plane, or to buy something at duty-free.
Conflating what the government *could* do with the data versus whether a vaccine passport regime in and of itself is a violation of HIPAA is classic fearmongering, because most people don’t understand HIPAA and just equate it with general privacy laws applied to medical data.
So….let me understand this. What happened to “my body my choice”. Plus the Left feel a Voter ID is racist and infringes on minority rights. It the same thing with the Vaxx Passport. This type of mandatory requirement is infringements on all Americans. This Vaxx passport will limit what you can do here plus place restrictions on any visiting tourist. Plus if the Left felt a Vaxx Passport was necessary for all Americans why are they allowing so many illegals to enter our country without being first vaccinated.
We operate in a society ruled by double standards