SUPERVISORS' HIPAA HOCUS POCUS: NOW YOU SEE YOUR PRIVACY, NOW YOU DON'T!

The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, in its infinite wisdom and dedication to obfuscation, recently waved through an amendment to a contract with 'Sensibill Services, Inc.' for something called 'CalAIM Justice Involved Medi-Cal Billing.' What's CalAIM, you ask? Don't worry, they don't really want you to know. But rest assured, it involves your health data and third-party billing, because nothing says 'efficient government' like farming out core functions to a company whose name sounds like a pay-per-text psychic service.

Our vigilant Supervisors, ever keen on making sure the county's fiscal mechanisms are impenetrable to the average taxpayer, decided to discreetly swap out Exhibit D – the critical HIPAA Business Associate Agreement – with an 'updated' version. Naturally, they ensured there was 'no change to the Agreement term or total maximum contract amount not to exceed $540,000.00.' Because why bother looking at the actual terms of data privacy when the price tag hasn't budged an inch? It's like buying a car by haggling over the floor mats but ignoring the engine.

The real sleight of hand, though, comes in section (b), which delegates authority to the County Health Director to make 'future non-material amendments or administrative updates.' Call us cynics, but this is how the fine print gets rewritten without pesky public oversight. What's 'non-material' today could be 'your entire medical history for sale on the dark web' tomorrow. But hey, it's 'Californina Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal,' so it must be good, right? Nevermind the gaping holes this 'update' might punch in your private information protections, it's all for the greater good of a government-run medical scheme that's as clear as mud.

And in a classic move from the progressive playbook, the Supervisors declared this administrative reshuffle magically "not a 'Project' within the meaning of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)." Of course not! Rejiggering how they handle sensitive health data for "justice-involved" individuals has absolutely no environmental impact. One really has to marvel at the intellectual gymnastics required to link a HIPAA agreement to CEQA, only to then exempt it. It's almost as if they're daring taxpayers to actually read the fine print.