- Joined
- Jul 19, 2004
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- 29,622
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Interesting that even Senator John McCain was unable to obtain all the medical records.
American citizens have long operated under the delusion that elected Congressional representatives have magical powers enabling them to override laws and regulations. This delusion is fostered by those representatives themselves, whose power is actually limited to sending a form letter to whichever government agency may play a role in the constituent's complaint. This serves as an indirect prompt to contact the constituent and attempt to help him / her via normal channels and procedures. That's it; that's all ...
With a 50 / 50 chance of being (erroneously) affiliated with some form of progress on the matter at issue, the representative's prospective payoff is the appearance of having helped - i.e., good PR. The typical down side to this charade is no worse than "I tried - sorry."
The simple fact is that a Senator has no more legal power to obtain a citizen's medical records than anyone else (i.e., none at all).
I'm familiar with this vacuous PR game from years spent as a public contact rep for a federal agency.
In most cases, this constitutes a relatively harmless game cynically exploited by officials for PR. In some cases, though, it can materially disadvantage the constituent.
I've had to work through multiple incidents where the official's illusory intervention (usually combined with the complainant's overestimation of that gambit's legal effectiveness) resulted in disadvantage or delay. The worst case scenarios involved irrevocable loss of entitlement rights. In those cases I never passed up the opportunity to formally specify and clearly explain (a) how the complainant had screwed him- / herself by trying to circumvent due process via appeal to an authority who never had any special authority to begin with and (b) the official's specific mistake(s) - up to and including outright inaction - that caused such negative outcomes.