Fred Wilson has an interesting blog up regarding the new Google Health service. Fred filled out his personal medical information and was disappointed that he was not able to publish this data and make it public.  Fred would like to have a sidebar widget for his blog with his health profile.  Many people wrote to Fred telling him why Google does not do this.  Many of them centered on the fact that insurance companies would use this information against you to deny or limit your coverage.  Some took shots at Fred's socio-economic status saying that he didn't care if the insurance companies used it against him because he could afford to pay whatever he had to.  Fred replies that he thinks withholding or being less than open about health issues to insurance companies, investors, etc. is problematic and in a perfect world insurance companies should not be able to use this against us. In fact Fred says:

Wouldn't we all be better off with an insurance system that wasn't able to discriminate between people based on pre-existing conditions? Wouldn't we be better off if we came together to insure everyone? Wouldn't we be better off if we knew everyone's medical conditions and what treatments worked and what did not? Wouldn't we be better off if we could search for others with the same conditions to share our experiences?

I don't believe Fred feels this way because of his socio-economic status. I think Fred thinks like this because he is I assume in good health.  I wonder if Fred were suffering from some medical condition, if his views on this would change.  This reminds me of the "nothing to hide" argument that some use to justify the government trampling on our privacy rights.  If you have nothing to hide, what do you care.  I care because it is wrong.  I care about not making health records public because it is wrong.  We don't live in a perfect world.  Even taking Hillary or Obama's health plans into account, we live in a world where insurance companies can discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions for the foreseeable future.  Think about if only healthy people published their records, what would that say about people who did not publish their records?

Fred's point about searching for others with the same condition is fine, if they wanted to be found. It is inherently a persons right not to be found.  In fact today if you want to share with a person who shares a medical condition with you, you can search and usually find a group and on line community of people. What is nice is some of these people can share in these groups without revealing their identity.  It is this ability to remain anonymous that I think make these types of communities successful.

Fred recognizes that not everyone would want to share their records. I say once we start dividing society by those who do and don't we really already have imposed a penalty on those who cherish their privacy.