Will Obama's Health Plan Expose AIDS/HIV Data?

Due to political sensitivity, AIDS is treated differently by health professionals from other communicable diseases.

The recent outbreak of swine flu, for example, has been diagrammed by health professionals with the names and locations of people infected worldwide. Vectors of transmission of the disease have been plotted. All the while, the data have been made available to the medical community and the public. AIDS is exempted from a similar procedure.

To avoid stigma and possible discrimination, medical records of AIDS patients are tightly guarded as are the medical records of patients found to be infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Unless a person reveals his/her status, it's virtually impossible to learn who is infected and how the infection was acquired.

My question: Will Obama's national electronic medical records system allow AIDS and HIV patient lists to be easily accessed?

Agreed, I'm no expert on health records but I'm familiar with databases. Once compiled, keyword and field searches for everything imaginable are possible. Furthermore, it's logically assumed that a national database will be available to many people. And, to quote Carlos Marcello (1910 - 1993), former New Orleans mob boss,

"Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead."

If my assumptions are valid, the efforts of those groups that have worked tirelessly to keep AIDS and HIV data secret will be irrelevant.

Companion post at The Jawa Report.