According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) website, Title I of HIPAA protects health insurance coverage for workers and their families when they change or lose their jobs.

Title II of HIPAA, the Administrative Simplification provisions, requires the establishment of national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers.

The AS provisions also address the security and privacy of health data. The standards are meant to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the nation's health care system by encouraging the widespread use of electronic data interchange in health care.

As a matter of linguistic-political criticism, many have noted that the Act did little to actually make health insurance more "portable" in the sense of preserving access to health care when an individual changes employers. Also, despite its many new rules on the sharing of medical information, the Act did not significantly increase health insurers' "accountability" for wrongdoing.

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