Steve Pope wrote:

> In my experience, staff at private hospitals will evade giving
> out information to relatives, whereas hospitals set up to serve
> Medicaid/Medicare/VA/Tricare will liberally tell relatives
> lots of details. I suppose this is because nobody sues them.
>
> Steve

Almost all hospitals in the US accept Medicare/Medicaid/Tricare
patients. Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare patients most certainly can
sue, and in some cases families of VA patients have been known to sue.
To my knowledge, HIPAA hasn't really been tested in the courts? I find
it is frequently misunderstood by people as well as how it is
interpreted by healthcare organizations.