ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a framework of choices of varying levels of control of information which individuals may choose based on their individual definition of privacy. It integrates traditional privacy theory with the differing conceptions of privacy used in health in Europe and the USA. The theoretical choices are informed by well established privacy theory. In the USA, the legal framework for healthcare privacy is a combination of constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law at the federal and state levels. The economic and social significance of privacy in the information society is dependent on how much people value their privacy. The earliest economic analyses of privacy focused on the efficiency of markets for personal information. The conception of privacy that played a very influential part in this debate could perhaps be best characterised as a conception of decisional privacy or an autonomous conception of privacy.
