[thetylerhayes]

I think it may be helpful to break perceptions of health data into at least two camps:

1. Societal stigma: this may not be something you agree with but it's just something that exists. People in the U.S., for whatever reasons, for right or wrong, feel like they should be protective about their health data, even if there's nothing potentially damaging or embarrassing in the data. It could be an ingrained feeling trained in them from years of visiting doctors who never gave them access to their data or it could be a learned response from watching CSI. Whatever the cause, societal stigma to by default be very protective of your health data is a real thing in the U.S. (I'm not saying they're necessarily more protective of health than financial data, but pointing out that stigma towards health data on its own is at least a thing.)

2. Legitimate fears: I think if you changed your example away from erectile dysfunction this would be more apparent. There are 133MM chronic illness sufferers in the U.S. so let's use a different, very common example: congestive heart failure. If you're 45 years old and trying to apply for a job and your potential employer finds out you have CHF it's very possible (in an unregulated environment) they'd consider not hiring you because you have a high risk of missing work or even dying. Or imagine you're a CEO of a powerful company and someone leaks the fact that you have pancreatic cancer — what would happen to your company's shares, let alone your employees' morale? This doesn't even get into the notions of genetic discrimination, which is already a real thing: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=employment+genetic+discr...

EDIT: Also thanks for mentioning HIPAA spelling. I twitch every time I read HIPPA.