In the past few weeks Google Health has caught a good amount of flack for inaccuracies that made their way into a patient’s personal health record, and whether it deserves blame or not, you have to admit Google did play a part in that debacle.
Now, however, a consumer watchdog group has accused Google of lobbying the federal government to let it sell patients’ online medical records, and this attempt at a pile-on goes too far. Despite a number of inaccurate reports by various publications, the Senate’s lobbying records show no evidence that Google lobbied the government to let it sell patients’ online medical information.
“According to first quarter federal reports, Google participated in lobbying efforts aimed at allowing the sale of electronic medical records in the economic stimulus legislation,” an article over at Healthcare IT News asserts.
Actually, first quarter Senate lobbying reports show that Google and its hired lobbyists lobbied the government on these specific health issues — the list includes some repeats just to be certain we’ve got them all: “Online Health-related initiatives, including health information technology provisions in H.R. 1, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”; “General online consumer privacy and protection issues”; “Online health-related initiatives; issues relating to online personal health records, including in connection with H.R. 1, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009″; ”Online Health-related initiatives, including health information technology provisions in H.R. 1, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”.
Miss the part about selling patients’ online medical information? So did we. Nowhere in the disclosure forms does Google claim it lobbied the government to sell patient’s medical data — the company admitted to lobbying the government about ARRA, PHRs and online privacy, but that’s not nearly enough evidence to make the claims Consumer Watchdog made in its press release.
It’s also worth pointing out that Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court recently wrote Google CEO Eric Schmidt to ask him to fully disclose all details of the company’s lobbying efforts. In the letter Court mentions the Senate lobbying records and admits: “The reports do not show what positions Google advocated and your public policy team appears unwilling to disclose its Congressional communications and positions on this privacy legislation.” (Emphasis mine.)
To read the actual Senate documents yourself, check out OpenSecrets.org’s profile for Google: Here’s the table of contents that link directly to Google’s Senate lobbyist disclosure forms (click on the little icons next to Google Inc.)
The other bit of misinformation that crept into the coverage of this story is that Google paid two lobbyists firms, the Podesta Group and King & Spalding, $150,000 and $80,000, respectively to lobby the federal government on health issues. Not true: Only a fraction of that money was for health issues.
In actuality, the Podesta Group was paid $150,000 to lobby the federal government on five different topics: International Freedom of Expression and Censorship, Open Internet and broadband issues, E-government issues, online advertising and privacy, and health information technology and online privacy. The Senate does not require lobbyist firms to break out how much each lobbyist activity cost, but if hard-pressed, $30,000 ($150,000 / 5 topics) would have been a much more acceptable figure for the amount Google paid Podesta Group for health IT lobbying.
Furthermore, King & Spalding’s lobbying activities for Google included 10 lobbyist activities on issues including renewable energy, copyright policy, international trade, online advertising for small businesses, consumer privacy, as well as ”Online Health-related initiatives, including health information technology provisions in H.R. 1, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” and more. So, $80,000 for 10 topics, if hard-pressed, would lead to an $8,000 estimate for health IT lobbying by King & Spalding for Google.
Consumer Watchdog points to an article written by iHealthbeat a few months ago that uses anonymous sources on Capitol Hill to make the claim that Google’s lobbyists have been trying to chip away at the privacy controls around personal health information online. Maybe the anonymous sources are right — maybe not — but what’s clear is that these Senate lobbying records do not shed any light on the issue one way or the other.