The Bush administration has proposed to eliminate the U.S. medical privacy rules that require patients to give consent for disclosure of their health information prior to receiving care.

The American Medical Association is crying foul.

See the Reuters article by Lisa Richwine:
Feds Urge Medical Privacy Changes, Advocates Upset.

That modification "strikes at the very heart of the privacy regulation. Without a prior consent requirement, patients will have no control over how their health care information is used or disclosed," said Georgetown University's Health Privacy Project, an advocacy group for medical privacy rights.

The American Medical Association, which had urged the federal government to make the consent requirement less burdensome for doctors, said it too thought the administration was going too far.

"We knew it had to be fixed. Just to remove it completely is a serious problem," said Dr. Donald Palmisano, the AMA's secretary-treasurer.