Were the Anti-Federalists correct Was the 1787 Constitution a betrayal Essay

Were the Anti-Federalists correct Was the 1787 Constitution a betrayal of the American Revolution - Essay Example According to the events that led to the formation of the new constitution, it is only right to note that the new Constitution was a step forward in strengthening the revolution. The main aim of the revolution was to achieve independence from the British, but it did not mean that United States of America could not form its own government or manage itself. The new constitution is a representation of the strength of the revolution, by recognising its weaknesses and strengthening them to form a national government, and not a betrayal to what the people of the United States fought against. This essay will describe how the new constitution was a means to strengthening the American Revolution. 1780s is referred to as the critical period. It is during this period that American Revolution faced intense challenges. America already had a Constitution (the Articles of Confederation) which helped the government win the revolutionary war, establish a territorial governance system in the Northwest Territories, resolve conflicting state land claims, and negotiate the 1783 treaty of Paris.[This is a brief description of the benefits of the previous constitution. what was this?] Under this Constitution however, the confederation Congress was unable to protect the nation’s commerce, could not pay the interest owed on national debt, and had no power to fight economic depression. America, after achieving its independence, was in chaos. It had a national debt which it was unable to pay because of lack of congressional powers to raise the money. Congress could ask states to contribute revenue, but could not force them to do so. America needed a sure way of getting revenue to pay i ts debts and govern the nation well. It experienced inflation which was as a result of a move to clear the national debt. Instead of collecting revenue through taxation, state and national governments printed money. Taxing the people was not an option at the time. This is

In Europe after the second world war several cities approved price Essay

In Europe after the second world war several cities approved price ceilings on rental accommodation - Essay Example The protest of people for controlling price is understandable. Even though price control is understandable but still the government may be able to protect only some of the consumers while imposing negative impact of price control on others. However the aim of the government is to protect the group that usually gets pressed hard because of inflation. Thus charging high interest on different loans is to protect people who are forced to borrow out of desperation. Similarly the maximum price of eatables, such as bread, is to protect poor ones who completely depend on it for their survival and the rent control is for protecting the landlords at times when the demand for the apartments exceed the supply (McEachern, 2012). The New York State legislators are seen defending the Protection Act of War Emergency Tenant in order to cater the housing shortage related to war. The war that has been addressed in this law is not the Vietnam War or the war of Iraq but it is the World War II, which is considered to be the starting of rent control issues in America. Although war has not much to do with the shortage of apartments, as the shortage are more likely to occur due to rent control; which is considered to be the supposed solution for making accommodation readily available. Gotham is the only city of America which embraces rent control; however many other cities have surrendered to the blarney of this legislative fix (Christ, 2009). Like all the other mandated price control of the government, rent control is also considered to be a law related to the fixation of maximum price or â€Å"rent ceiling†, which explains that what exactly the landlords must charge from the tenants. In order to make the rent ceiling work, the rent must be placed below the rate that would be prevailed otherwise. For example, an enactment prohibiting landlords from exceeding the apartment rent from $100,000 per month would have not been

Neoliberal Policies on Media Regulation

Neoliberal Policies on Media Regulation Amirah Shafie Neoliberal policies vs Governmental regulations and policies Cultural industries are involved in the production and dissemination of products that can influence our understanding and knowledge of the world (Hesmondhalgh, 2013). Because of its influential nature, the question of who should own and regulate the industries and commodities produced has been a highly contested topic. Proponents of Neoliberal policies argued that public ownership and regulation of cultural industries are inefficient and provide insufficient choice and perspectives for viewers. Thus, they postulate the best way to increase this choice was to provide more commercial (private) channels coupled with the end or lessening of governmental regulation. On the other hand, the ideological imperatives of a commercially driven media system drive huge concerns on the quality of cultural commodities that will be produced, resulting in support for cultural industries to remain public with strong governmental regulations so that public interests will be protected. Through analysing Murdoch’s global media empire, this paper takes the public interest stance and argues that Neoliberal policies, while seemingly progressive and adopted to liberate production, distribution and consumption of cultural commodities, ironically legitimises the decreasing media diversity and low quality news content. There must, therefore, be appropriate amount of government intervention when it comes to controlling the cultural industries. From the 1970s onwards, neoliberal supporters argued the economic downturn of that period was a consequence of public ownership and governmental regulations. The basis of the neoliberal approach to culture is the idea that free, unregulated competition will produce efficient markets and producing such markets should be the main goal of public policy (Hesmondhalgh, 2013). As a result, the 80s onwards witnessed major historical changes in the policy landscape. Hesmondhalgh terms these policy changes as marketization, which refers to ‘the permeation of market exchange as a social principle’. These changes include having broadcasting institutions privatised or unrestricted to terrestrial, commercial broadcaster, cable and satellite providers. Controls on content such as amount of advertising, laws and regulations on media ownership were also eradicated or greatly lightened. On the global scale, the impetus for neoliberal marketization peaked in the 1997 WTO agreement (Jin, 2 005). Under the agreement, many states made market access commitments which decreased or removed restrictions on foreign ownership and licensing in communications. It has been argued that marketization would allow companies to compete with one another and by doing so, will produce quality products more efficiently in order to get the most audience. This would also mean that audience could get different and better types of information at a cheaper and more accessible way. No doubt, the marketization of cultural industries has allowed global audience to access news from different channels apart than the ones offered locally. However, if we were to take a closer look, most of these channels are actually produced by a few large conglomerates, namely Rupert Murdochs News Corp, Viacom, Bertelsmann, Warners, Sony, AT T, and Disney. Rather than increasing diversity globally, marketization of cultural industries have ignited a surge of mergers acquisitions because giant communication firms consistently moves aggressively into deregulated domestic communications markets around the world. This means that marketization resulting from neoliberal policies has allowed for the concentration of ownership among a few mega-media giants and the world actually gets exposed to news produced from these same media giants, weakening the neoliberal stance that competition produces diverse choices. Once of these media giants include News Corp. The growth of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp commenced in Australia when he started buying newspaper companies in which he now owns two-thirds of the nation’s newspaper production. With the relaxing of regulations, News Corp further expanded into Britain to include both newspapers and television stations, thus further dominating much of the content in that area. By the 1990s, News Corp became the biggest press publisher in Britain. News Corp also partly gained controlled over a pioneer satellite television system BSKYB, which is the television source for most British homes. Next, Murdoch expanded the reach of his News Corporation in the United States by buying over 20th Century Fox which include Fox News, Fox Sports, and FX. He then purchased the New York Post and Fox 5 in New York. Then in 2003, the News Corporation was allowed to buy Direct TV, the largest television satellite service in the United States. Murdoch also bought satellite television networks in Asia and Lati n America. Globally, Murdoch satellite systems are estimated to reach more than three hundred million homes. With Fox Television and 20th Century Fox providing content, this satellite system, which is consistently moving toward conquering the global market, signals an expanding global vertical integration (Broe, 2004). This desire for total control prompts more concentration by the other media conglomerates to contest News Corp’s control, as seen by Comcasts attempts to take over entertainment provider Disney in 2004 and Time Warner in 2014. This conglomeration of companies like Murdoch’s News Corporation is worrying as it has the power to influence the diversity of global news content. Simply take a look at how News Corporation’s company in India, Star News, is run. Star News has no permanent foreign correspondents of its own, even in neighbouring countries, as there seem to be no economic or corporate sense to invest in running foreign bureaux or lease time on costly satellite networks for live transmission of news stories. Therefore, Star News uses footage provided by News Corporation’s other international news networks such as Fox Channel from News York and Sky News from London. It is not alarming, then, that Fox opinions and take to news is apparent in India, as evidenced during the Iraq invasion in 2003, when Star News simply repeated, often word-for-word in Hindi, the Pentagon line on ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ (Thussu, 2007). Here, we can see that by relegating cultural industries such as news companies to the rigours of the market has allowed conglomerates such as News Corp to control news production all over the world and disseminate their ideology (in this case Pentagon support for Operation Iraqi Freedom) easily, affecting the diversity of global news content. Quality of news is also affected with the marketization of cultural industries. Privatising and commercialising news companies means that these companies are now responsible to shareholders. In order to make sure that news generated would provide profits to the channel, Murdoch’s News Corp has been regularly sensationalising its news as they vie for attention. Murdochs early statement that newspapers were meant to entertain not educate has served as a template for much of News Corp contents. This style of exaggerated story filled with invented quotes; the rewriting of laconic news-service copy into lavish sensationalized; the eye-shattering, usually ungrammatical, irrelevant and gratuitously blood-curdling headline yarns (Leper Rapes Virgin, Gives Birth To Monster Baby) has been used in many of its news coverage (Broe, 2004). Murdoch’s News Corporation has established what is labelled as the ‘four S’ model of journalism – ‘scare headlines, sex, scandal, and sensation’ in order to secure commercial success in almost all of its major acquisitioned properties (Arsenault Castells, 2008). Such strategies in incorporating aspects of new sensationalism have replaced the original value of â€Å"objective† news reporting. Critics have also emphasized that the gimmickry, opinion and comments such as the ones on Fox News is detrimental to long-established journalistic principles to ‘objectively’ inform citizens about the world (Cushin Lewis, 2009). In this case, the commercial and ideological aims of News Corp, that is to gain greater audience share and present a partial view of the world does not promote a public service ethos focusing on audience understanding and democratic participation. Evidently, market forces do not guarantee that the media companies will serve their non-economic roles as ethical institutions of the democratic public sphere and this has taken a toll on the quality and diversity of democratic media due to the dangerous concentrations of media power. Hence, it is important that there continues to be news industries that are publicly owned in order to balance the commercial imperatives of private industries. There also needs to be stronger regulations that can control the size of these media conglomerates so as to ensure that they do not abuse their power in influencing the diversity of news contents as well as the quality of news produced. For example, in 2005, News Corporation’s subsidiary company, News of the World was caught for phone hacking of several high profile celebrities and Britain’s royal family members, causing a huge political and public fury. The government had to intervene for the protection of individuals’ privacy and ethical reporting of news. Due to this hacking scandal, News Corp. was forced withdraw its bid for full take-over of the British satellite broadcaster BSkyB, as Prime Minister Cameron announced a wide-ranging public inquiry into the British media (Wintour, Sabbagh Watt, 2011). Here, we can see the importance in governmental intervention in ensuring that this media company does not abuse its power. We also see the extent to which the market forces of competition can push companies to go beyond the boundaries to beat their competitors to get the juiciest information. As quoted by Raboy on media and communications regulation, â€Å"as media are paramount social institutions, public intervention with respect to their orientation is both legitimate and necessary† (Lunt Livingstone, 2012). Those who object government regulations would rather choose neoliberal policies in the name of democratic freedom. What they fail to see is that freedom should also come in the form of public interest and government regulations can protect these freedom that democracy so seriously advocate. There is also nothing democratic and free when it comes to having big conglomerates who can control easily global production and dissemination of news content. McChesney (2000) was adamant about the fundamental incompatibility of democracy with patterns of consolidated media ownership. In response to Murdoch’s power in the media industry, McChesney (2000) said, ‘‘there is no human, no single firm, no single entity that should have this sort of power. That’s just a core democratic value and principle.† Certainly, having full governmental regulation on media companies would also be unnecessary and dangerous. I am not proposing that there should be full governmental control with no privatisation of media companies. What I am proposing is that private and public media companies need to be present in any country so that both these entities can act as watchdogs. However, the government needs to be strong enough to be able to develop social and cultural policies that can encourage fair deliberation and engagement through intergovernmental, regional and global cooperation (Lunt Livingstone, 2012). These policies should focus on positive as well as negative freedoms, whereby the role of governments is not only to protect citizens but also to ensure conditions for a civic culture together with diverse and quality engagement. Without a much robust attitude towards media concentration and the chase for meaningful diversity and quality, current public interest considerations are unlikely to b e protected against aggressive marketization. Protecting the public interest requires both a more determined stance on media concentration and a more imaginative approach to securing media diversity, one that is based not simply on economic benefits but on the advantages of stimulating mindful debate and critical perspectives. References Cushion, S., Lewis, J. (2009). Towards a ‘Foxification’ of 24-hour news channels in Britain?Journalism,10(2), 131-153. Retrieved March 31, 2015, from http://jou.sagepub.com/content/10/2/131.abstract Wintour, P., Sabbagh, D., Wat, N. (2011, July 14). Rupert Murdoch gives up BSkyB takeover bid.The Guardian. Retrieved March 30, 2015, from http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jul/13/rupert-murdoch-gives-up-bskyb-bid McChesney, R. (2000). The political economy of communication and the future of the field.Media, Culture Society,22(1), 109-116. Retrieved March 29, 2015, from http://mcs.sagepub.com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/content/22/1/109.refs Broe, D. (2004). Fox and Its Friends: Global Commodification and the New Cold War.Society for Cinema Media Studies,43(4), 97-102. Retrieved March 20, 2015, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3661159 Lunt, P., Livingstone, S. (2012). Media regulation: Governance and the interests of citizens and consumers. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. doi: http://dx.doi.org.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/10.4135/9781446250884 Jin, D. (2008). Neoliberal restructuring of the global communication system: Mergers and acquisitions.Media, Culture Society,30(3), 357-373. Retrieved March 20, 2015, from http://mcs.sagepub.com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/content/30/3/357 Arsenault, A., Castells, M. (2008). Politics: A Sociological Analysis Switching Power: Rupert Murdoch and the Global Business of Media.International Sociology,23, 488-513. Retrieved May 20, 2015, from http://annenberg.usc.edu/Faculty/Communication and Journalism/~/media/InternationalSociology.ashx Thussu, D. (2007). The ‘Murdochization’ of news? The case of Star TV in India.Media, Culture Society,29(4), 593-611.

Just Like in the Movies Essay -- Creative Writing Short Story Essays

Just Like in the Movies As the credits began to appear and the typical end-of-movie music started to play Anne sat quietly in her chair while the tears streamed down her face. This was not a new moment for her; in fact this is how every weekend night since high school had been spent. Most people would find something wrong or sad with this, but the truth was there was no other place she’d rather be. There was comfort she found sitting bundled up with a box of tissues and popcorn in front of whatever her movie choice of the night may be. Anne rose from the faded green chair and switched off the TV, sending the room into immediate darkness, until she flicked on the overhead light. â€Å"If that was only me,† she wondered aloud, as it was a common, almost routine question after every film for anyone who was willing to answer. The single meow of spunky, her feline companion was the only response she ever received, and tonight was no different. She shuffled her way to the kitchen to wash out the plastic popcorn bowl and glanced at the clock on the wall, 2:06 am, not a surprise. She switched off the light and headed for the bedroom with spunky close behind. Anne crawled into bed and stared at the ceiling waiting for her dreams to come carry her away. Anne Hathaway was pretty average to anyone who never took the time to get to know her, which was just about everyone. She was one of those girls that was ugly in middle school, but became beautiful in adolescence. The only problem was she didn’t know it, as far as she was concerned she remained the ugly duckling. Which was far from reality. Anne was about two weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday and could pass for eighteen. She had soft copper hair that reste... ...er reactions more than she was watching the movie. When it finally came to and end, Anne found herself smiling â€Å"well that was different.† Then she turned to Eve, who was almost on the point of laughter. â€Å"I’m sorry, I just had to show you this movie† â€Å"Why are you sorry? I liked it, I’ll admit it was ‘different’, but it was still good† Anne said, â€Å"is this what you meant when you said you wanted to see a love story that wasn’t like all the other ones?† The look on Eve’s face began to change to that of a scared little puppy. Anne looked at Eve and everything seemed to fall into place, she let go of all her hurt and leaned forward slightly to meet Eve’s lips with a kiss. There was no need for either of them to say anything, Eve had seen something in Anne, and fallen in love, and Anne had never let herself until now fall in love again.

Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World Essay

Fareed Zakaria’s â€Å"The Post-American World† â€Å"Through his writings, research, and teaching, Fareed Zakaria has made an impact in the field of political science and foreign policy. A graduate of both Yale and Harvard, Zakaria has utilized the knowledge that he has gained by writing extensively on the subject of international affairs. Articles authored by Zakaria often appear in distinguished publications such as Wall Street Journal, New Republic, New York Times, and Foreign Affairs. Zakaria’s Journalistic writing has also led to the publication ofa number of books† (Fareed Zakaria). Fareed Zakaria is Indian mmigrant who has become a true patriot of America. Almost all his works are related to the United States. This fact can be read in his creations such as The American Encounter, From Wealth to Power, and The Post-American World. â€Å"Several critics found The American Encounter to be an admirable project†¦. Library Journal contributor Tricia Gray felt the book is the best suited for academics and some of the larger public libraries, while Booklist reviewer Mary Carroll recommended the book for public display, noting: ‘Even Libraries with a full run of Foreign Affairs on the shelf may want this collection. Fareed Zakaria). Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World is extraordinary event. The author of the idea of â€Å"Illiberal democracy’ Fareed Zakaria sought to explain to America and West political diversity of the modern world, to imbue the American establishment to respect the historical choice of non-western peoples. The authorà ¢â‚¬â„¢s new creation is not a description of decline of the U. S. that has become commonly known, but thoughtful analysis of the growing world’s globalization, its effects and outlines of the future configuration. â€Å"Changes take place gradually’, writes Zakaria. We live in the Newton’s dynamic world, not in the Medieval Europe’s static world. Everything started from Galileo Galilei who challenged static world and made first changes which led to collapse of Medieval Europe’s world. According to Fareed Zakaria, over the past five centuries there have been three â€Å"tectonic shifts of power†. The first shift that began in the XV century and accelerated dramatically in the XVIII century gave rise to the phenomenon â€Å"modernity’ with corresponding attributes of science and technology, commerce and capitalism, and agrarian and industrial revolutions. The first stage haracterized by the continued dominance of West over the rest of the world. The second shift, according to the author, began in last years of the XIX century, and its content was an elevation of the U. S. , its transformation into â€Å"imperial successor† of ancient Rome with the relevant economic and political-military attributes. In the last two decades America’s influence has become â€Å"unipolar† – a phenomenon unprecedented in modern history. Finally, the third shift that Fareed Zakaria called â€Å"the rise of the others† is happening before our eyes. It is a consequence of accelerated growth of major countries in Asia and beyond. The third shift is actually creating a new international system in which the former â€Å"object† and â€Å"observers† are transtormed into real global â€Å"players†, acting on the basis ot their own interests In other words, distribution of power is shifting from America to other centers of power. However, â€Å"It is not ‘anti-American’ world, but ‘post-American’, directed from many centers not only by Americans, but also by others†, writes the author. Fareed Zakaria describes several trends that determine and will determine the trajectory of evolution of the â€Å"Post-American World†. The author emphasizes the â€Å"Islamic threat† hich, however, at the level of ideology cannot compete with the west modernization. Islam has to adapt to the challenges of modernization and globalization in societies that do not welcome the idea of Jihad. Therefore, â€Å"Modern civilization may be stronger that we suspect† (Zakaria 17). Fareed Zakaria states the offset of the global geo-economic â€Å"axis† to the east, in the direction of the Asian-Pacific region. This trend was reinforced by globalization. Now, the vast majority of the monetary and financial resources of the world are concentrated in the Asian-Pacific region. â€Å"According Goldman Sachs, by 2040, the combined GDP of China, India, Brazil, Russia and Mexico may exceed the corresponding fgures of the G-7† (Zakaria 27). Thus, â€Å"American ideas of the world order† actively challenged by global energy producers: Iran, Venezuela and Russia. Particular attention is given to the national identity of the peoples in the â€Å"Post-American World†. In â€Å"The Rise of Nationalism† Zakaria sees two sides. Firstly, objective difficulties of coordination of private and public interests, and in this sense â€Å"raising of the rest†, are able to â€Å"prevent transformation of the forces of global growth nto factor of global disorder and disintegration† (Zakaria 27). Secondly, the U. S. will have to reckon with the fact that in the modern world there is the concept of â€Å"freedom of choice†. Zakaria cleverly illustrates this fact by excerpt from a conservation of last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten and Mahatma Gandhi. Mountbatten said: â€Å"If we Just leave (India), there will be chaos. † Gandhi replied: mies, but it will be our chaos† (Zakaria 33). Further, very few people in the modern world are ready to agree with the western version of the â€Å"new world order† which is a continuation of the American version. Now, many countries set together horizontal communication without support of the American â€Å"center†. One example of this kind is an interaction of the four mega-countries: India, China, Russia and Brazil (BRICS). As for the â€Å"Last Superpower† the U. S. holds and will hold the positions of the most competitive economy due to the highly developed demographic dynamics. At the same time the role of Western Europe and Japan in the world economy, according to the author, will continue to decline. The inconsistency of being America is that the U. S. , on the one hand, remains at the top of the world’s new order, and on the other and, the new order of its dynamics challenges the privileged position of America. Fareed Zakaria fascinatingly describes historic ascent of the West to the top of industrial civilization, which is a subject well known by experts of the economic history, but new to the ordinary readers. In this approach, there is convincing, in my view, the geopolitical logic. This logic has an idea that the industrial civilization and its foundation not questioned. The author writes: â€Å"Unprecedented economic growth has produced unprecedented social change. China has compressed the West’s two undred years of industrialization into thirty’ (Zakaria 97). The country with an active operation of market mechanisms and the most significant population in the world is a new challenge to the United States. It is the challenge that America hasn’t previously encountered and to which was unprepared. The tinal chapters ot the book are dedicated to America’s role in the â€Å"post-American world. † â€Å"Secret weapon† of the U. S. , Zakaria believes, is the demographic potential of the country. It is going to hit 365 million people by 2030, while the ratio of workers to not employed will be ore favorable than, for example, in Western Europe and Japan.

Hipaa Essay

HIPAA Abstract The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or better known as (HIPAA) began in 1996 as an Act to help individuals keep their health insurance as they moved from one job to another. As the future brought new advancements HIPAA evolved to include much more than portability. HIPAA now includes many complex rules to protect patient privacy along with the use of information technology that transfers medical records. HIPAA Nearly a decade ago, lawmakers tried to combine the older age ethical tradition of patient privacy with newer age health technology advances, in hopes of saving more lives and reducing such high medical costs. Congress’ intention of the HIPAA Privacy Act was to bring the healthcare industry into the 20th century, while saving U.S citizens billions of dollars. As health care technologies advance so does the rules, rights, and regulations of HIPAA. It’s important to know the â€Å"in’s† and â€Å"outs† of HIPAA and these new advancement’s. Having a guest speaker for HIPAA helped me learn and realize these new advancement’s, a long with what HIPAA really stands for, the rights of patients, and what a breach is and how to prevent it. In the words of the guest speaker, HIPAA equals privacy. Each letter in HIPAA stands for and explains exactly what the Act is. The letter â€Å"H† in HIPAA stands for health, the health of the patient. â€Å"I† in HIPAA stands for insurance, the availability of health plans for the patient. The â€Å"P† in HIPAA stands for portability, it’s portable. â€Å"A† is for accountability, they are accountable for here actions. And finally the last â€Å"A† in HIPAA stands for act, the action of carrying something out. All of these letter s may make up HIPAA but it’s important to know what they actually mean and stand for. After learning the patient rights from the guest speaker I think it makes up the most important part of HIPAA. Knowing your rights under HIPAA can save you from trouble in the future. The first right of HIPAA is The Right to Access, how you the patient can access their health information and obtain copies of their health information. The second patient right is The Right to  Restrictions which gives you the right to restrict certain disclosures of your health information. Another important patient right to HIPAA is The Right to Amendment, it gives you the right to request on amendment to your health information. The next right is The Right to Accounting of Disclosures, this right makes sure your request on accounting of disclosure made on your health information is met. The next patient right is The Right to Complain of Privacy Rights Violation, which I think is the most important. It gives you the right to complain if you feel that your health information has been used or disclosed inappropriately. The last patient right the speaker talked about was how the patients’ health information us used and disclosed. Which allows many ways on how your health information is used or disclosed in regards to treatment, payment, and health care operations. Also patient rights of authorization to release medical or he alth information and the right to revoke authorizations. As you can see there are many rights that the patient has. These rights ensure that patients get the right care in regards to health and how medical records are stored. Even though these rights protect patients there are still major problems that can happen. One of the major problems with HIPAA is a breach. A breach is the unauthorized access use, or disclosure of protected health information that compromises the privacy of such information. According to the HIPAA guest speaker, penalties for a breach can equal up to 1.5millon a year. For individuals found guilty of breach, penalties can be up to $100,000 per year, per violation and or up to ten years in prison. You may be wondering how they decide if there is a breach. Some exceptions to breach that the guest speaker informed us of are unintentional access or use of health information. Only if that information accessed was made in a good faith within employment and the inform ation was not further accessed or used, it is not considered a breach. Another exception of a breach situation is child abuse. Law Enforcement must collect medical evidence to investigate and prosecute a possible child abuse case. Along with Law Enforcement Officials, Social Services also have HIPAA exceptions so they can serve victims of abuse, neglect, and domestic violence. A breach in HIPAA can be very serious, so it’s important to practice good prevention precautions. Some of the guest speaker’s tips on preventing a breach were locking files to secure important papers. Also securing areas that have any health  information, so only the people who are authorized have access to them. Not only do health care workers take precautions to avoid a breach, but so does HIPAA. HIPAA officials do random checks on health care patients in different facilities to ensure that only the authorized workers had access to their medical records. One of HIPAA’s main goals are to protect the patient’s privacy. Taking these precautions as a health care worker can prevent any complications regarding HIPAA and most importantly patient privacy. Having a guest speaker come into class helped me understand more concepts of HIPAA I didn’t understand. She taught me what HIPAA is really about, patient rights, and how important it is to prevent a br each. Learning more about HIPAA will help me in my future career. HIPAA will directly affect my future, as I am currently going for a medical assistant degree. But HIPAA doesn’t just affect people going into the medical field it affects the patients. Therefore it is important for everyone to learn and understand the importance of HIPAA. References Law and Ethics (For the Health Professions) 6e (2013). HIPAA. Pages From74 – To 76 http://www.uthscsa.edu/hipaa/patientrights.asp http://www.ndaa.org/ncpca_update_v16_no4.html http://hipaacow.org/ http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/index.html http://www.hipaa.com/