From the New York Times:
Responding to Republicans who have repeatedly tied gun violence to mental healthissues, President Obama’s new gun control plan will allow state agencies and the Social Security Administration to provide certain “protected health information” to the F.B.I. to help crack down on weapons sales to people who pose a danger to themselves or others or are unable to manage their own affairs. ...
“We are concerned about the implications of this rule,” said Jennifer Mathis, a lawyer at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, an advocacy group for patients. “It points a finger inappropriately at people with mental illness as a source of gun violence. It’s a bad precedent to start creating exceptions to the privacy law for people with mental illness, who are responsible for about 4 percent of incidents of gun violence.” ...
Under a rule to be developed by Social Security, the administration said the agency would provide information on “approximately 75,000 people each year who have a documented mental healthissue, receive disability benefits and are unable to manage those benefits because of their mental impairment, or who have been found by a state or federal court to be legally incompetent.” ...
“No one’s psychotherapy notes are going to end up being disclosed because of this rule,” said Andrew Sperling, a lobbyist at the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group for patients and their families.
Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, an expert on psychiatry and the law at Columbia University, said that the regulation “does not require or permit the reporting of any clinical information.”
Dr. Renée L. Binder, president of the American Psychiatric Association, said the group did not see a threat to doctor-patient confidentiality.
“We feel that people who are dangerous should not have access to guns,” Dr. Binder said. ...
Jonathan M. Stein, a lawyer at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia who has won many court cases for Social Security beneficiaries with disabilities, called the Social Security component discriminatory.
“The government is seizing on a group of people with serious mental illness who are unable to manage their money,” he said. “What does that have to do with any propensity for gun violence?”
For the record, I strongly disagree with Ms. Mathis and Mr. Stein. I see no privacy or discrimination issue here. This list isn't going to be public. The greatest threat that this will address is suicide and that's no minor threat in the group who will be affected by this action.
By the way, Social Security still hasn't sent a proposal over to the Office of Management and Budget. At least, no proposal is showing up on the OMB website. If this is going to be finalized before President Obama leaves office, this needs to start moving pronto.
8 comments:
get ready:
Local man get approved for DIB ends up in a stand off with ATF agents. The local man had his wife appointed as his payee over concerns how he would use his retro payment. ATF had record that he has 3 weapons in his ownership. Now live to the chopper.
Well, see, if a person is rich enough to live on their own money and not receive benefits, or at doesn't have a rep payee, they can own guns, at least for now.... Wait and see how all of this develops. Soon they will be requiring records from treating mental health officials for all patients. And they have the ability to do it with the new electronic medical files... Latest from SSA:
C. Field Office/TSC action
If you receive inquiries regarding SSA’s policy on referring individual names to NICS, please provide the following information: SSA is working in consultation with DOJ to develop a proposed regulation to comply with its obligations. We plan to publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in the Federal Register, and once published, we welcome the public’s feedback on our proposed approach.
This is the tip of the ice berg... Remember, they only came for the Jews to begin with...
How many on SSI or SSDI have commited these mass shootings? More likely to be those who have not received or have just started to receive treatment. So, if you don't have a way to identify from the beginning (friends, family, co-workers), then this move is unlikely to have a big impact on reducing mass shootings.
I'm concerned about my clients who require a beneficiary payee due to a specific math learning disability, but who otherwise are perfectly capable of handling a gun. Whether for protection or otherwise. Unless the rule is narrowed to mental illness, not cognitive disorders, this could be overkill -- pun intended. Many illiterate people are perfectly capable of carrying guns. It wasn't that long ago that literacy was not required in order to fight and carry an gun in WWII. Many veterans back then couldn't read or write. Yet those people today get payees. This is a problem.
Wonder how many are too unstable and violent to even have a Rep Payee willing to serve?
Social Security data bases likely to identify only a small percentage of the 'walking time bombs' prowling our streets. ...and, as others have mentioned, misidentify others who are harmless. Aside: Is it not interesting that the more gun laws that we have, that the more shootings we have?
Because of the importance placed on privacy in the Social Security program, the very first regulation adopted by the new Social Security Board in June 1937 was its rules regarding confidentiality of its records...Regulation No. 1.
Regulation No. 1 has been long dying on the vine. This latest proposal seems to put the final nail in Reg. No. 1's coffin. RIP
I could see this writing on the wall for injured workers who's only reason for getting SSI was on an approved SSA doctor BUT NOT their physical disabilities even though many were forced into filing mental stress claims by their WC applicant attorneys so to to help the employer get rid of the physical injury & the SSA complied as well as all other agencies including the the DOL & the DH&HS.. Every body is a nut or slut except for those who manage to conjure up that most decent working people who lost their jobs via an employer made work injury, illness potential death or death, would just be a bunch of nuts to deprive us of everything, even the ability to protect ourselves. AND yes, this is reminiscent of "first they came for the Jews". Faschism IS the insurance industry, owned by corporations approved by the fed govt., Congress & courts, all MBAS en masquerade, just like back in WW11. Here in the U.S.A. it started with Workers Comp.. the most malevolent and insidious orchestration to literally steal the Baby Boomers in lieu of benefits besides their health, millions of injured workers, who got it all taken away & then give then a mere pittance called SSI and now it has all went down hill from there & now including what little protection we may have had. all constructively built on a false premise. We tried to tell people & no one listened and now everyone else is up for the same.
This was well over 40 years in the making. Leave it all to congress to have made it all happen. The REAL Faschists.
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