How Does HR 550 Effect Missourians?

H.R. 550 passed through the House on November 30, 2021 with bipartisan votes. What is this bill and how will it affect Missourians? This bill deals with our personal immunization records being shared.

What does the bill say?

This bill directs the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to take actions to work with data sharing and other aspects of immunization information systems. Among the common people, this is a vaccine registry. The government keeps track of who has gotten what, and the government is allowed to share this information with anyone. If this bill becomes a law, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will give grants to state and local health departments who abide by their sharing of data. The bill’s heading summarizes itself as “Expanding CDC And Public Health Department Capabilities.”  H.R. 550 would make the government collection of private medical data more efficient and interconnected. 

Pros And Cons

“Given what’s happening across the country, the idea of building a surveillance system that is stronger to conduct surveillance on the vaccination status on the American people is very disturbing, ^[1]” said Twila Brase, president of the Citizen’s Council for Health Freedom.

However, Representative Crenshaw from Texas said, “We’re worried about these authoritarian blue-state governors that indeed do want to track your data… ^[2] “Every state already has a database, a vaccine database… What we don’t need is a federal entity coming in and tapping into the state databases, ^[3]” Representative Cammack from Florida said.