Do Europeans care if their health data is secret or not? I feel in the US its a big deal that people dont want insurance companies to measure them and deny coverage to those who need it most, but in most of the world that isn't an issue.

Yeah we do. For many reasons:

Privacy is privacy. I ideally don’t want any of my data sold to anyone, but health data is even more vulnerable.

In my country it was even a big deal when they allowed different doctors to access your health data via a common system, as there were e.g. concerns that the information recorded by one doctor might bias another doctor, so some felt that it should be your choice what data to share between different parts of the public health system (except for explicit referrals).

Moreover, most European countries do have private doctors, private hospitals, and private health insurance – it’s just way less used than the public system. Those would have the same concerns as in the US.

Health data is usually the highest level protected data under most laws. It's not about just insurance. Part of the problem is once data is out there, it can be used by any shady person.

You can be discriminated against a job based on health records. Scary diseases like AIDS and TB make it hard for unskilled labor to land a job since it's so easy to discriminate. Pregnancy history may hurt women who are in countries with more generous maternity leave.

Mental health history will hurt just about everyone - who wants a worker who can claim ADHD, depression, anxiety, etc as reasons to be unproductive?

Then people will simply deny getting diagnosed for fear that they may uncover something that puts their jobs at risk. That hurts the medical system as a whole.

Combine with weird stuff like eugenics. What if we identify a possible rapist gene and neuter them in advance? Or bar people with a klepto gene from working in finance? You may live in happy, sane, democratic societies today, but it may not be the case 30 years from now.

> Do Europeans care if their health data is secret or not?

Can't speak for all Europeans, but in my neck of the wood, Germany, they do very much.

Of course they do, don't ask silly questions.

Of course we do. And for exactly the same reasons, too.

Isn't an issue yet.

> Do Europeans care if their health data is secret or not?

Do Europeans care if their private and personal data is secret or not? What kind of question is that?

Why would they not?

You still wouldn't necessarily want a life insurance company to know stuff they haven't formally asked to know, you still have health information that could be used to blackmail you or whose reveal would be humiliating or upsetting.

I mean, of course? This is why I opposed electronic health record ( EPD (elektronisch patiëntendossier)) back in the days. Even then, SSL (TLS) downgrade attack existed and was known to NSA. IIRC EPD was started as opt-in, then opt-out, then mandatory.

I received my daughter's ASD diagnosis via Zivver. This included very personal details about her life. No parent would want that to be public. For adults it is worse: they become vulnerable to extortion, and Mossad is known to go very far for the cause.

Deeply

As an European, I HATE when my data is mishandled or leaked (and this is basically the entire point of the GDPR)

For sure, yes!