Why do you assume Hawaii's privacy laws are less strict than the federal ones?
Are you telling me that if you gave your doctor WRITTEN permission to allow me to see your blood tests, he can't legally do so because he is still somehow prohibited from showing them to me under strict federal government medical laws?
I honestly don't know--it's a complicated and far-reaching law. I do know that Obama made a written request to the DOH to release two copies to his lawyer. A summary of HIPAA says, "All authorizations must be in plain language, and contain specific information regarding the information to be disclosed or used, the person(s) disclosing and receiving the information, expiration, right to revoke in writing, and other data." It sounds like each individual release requires a separate authorization with all that detail. If Hawaii's law is anything like that, obviously Obama isn't going to write an authorization for every single person that wants to look at his records.
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Why are you applying HIPAA rules to explain why or why not Hawaii can allow reporters to examine Obama's long form birth certificate? The federal HIPAA medical privacy law has absolutely nothing to do with how Hawaii, or any other state, applies its privacy laws concerning its documents. You are comparing apples to oranges.
HIPAA, the federal privacy law covering medical records, has nothing to do with how a state controls or releases such documents like birth certificates, death data, and marriage information.
Again, you are comparing apples to oranges when you compare Hawaii privacy laws to federal HIPAA medical privacy laws, because each state has its own laws as to who can see a person's birth certificate, while federal HIPAA medical privacy laws apply to all 57 states the same.