[gumby]

I'm concerned that the exigencies of pandemic will cause people to get used to a system that tosses privacy out the door. Not sure how to stop this.

A couple of nits to pick:

> in Australia. Interest in telehealth has gone from zero to infinity over the past two weeks

Slight exaggeration; wouldn't you call the royal flying doctors service telehealth? And HIPPA is a US law.

[eskaytwo]

The key point is that a video consult with a doctor is now (as of last week) available to most of the population, including those in the city, and can be claimed on Medicare. That’s a huge change from previously where it only applied in specific scenarios. I’m sure the RFDS did some video/phone consults but their patients are literally remote - some hundreds of kilometres from the next property.

[cbsmith]

I'm not sure that you can really say "a system that tosses privacy out the door". There's lots of privacy protections in place. Sure, it requires trustworthy providers, but that's largely true of a non-open source E2E solution as well.

Nit: HIPPA is not a US law, but HIPAA is. ;-)

[gumby]

> Nit: HIPPA is not a US law, but HIPAA is. ;-)

Touché! I'm even HIPAA trained and have to deal with it all the time yet I chronically make that error. I can't even see it when proof reading. Ouch.