No one I know who works with HIPAA would call it a 'good' solution.
What specific components do you think are problematic?
I've worked as a developer with health care providers and insurance companies for 5 years, and other than it being annoying as "some regulation exists" no one I've talked to feels it's a bad solution to the problem.
Asking industries to be happy about privacy regulation seems an unreasonable goalpost.
By my quick reading, the majority of that article is spent dismantling the complaints of those at the beginning of the article. In summary, the complainers appear to be either overly cautious, or flat out misinterpret the law.
Besides, I’d be willing to bet that those at Equifax would have similar things to say about a comparable credit reporting law, just like how some medical practitioners don’t like HIPAA.
Unfortunately this link wants me to login.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Problems+with+HIPAA
I just googled it, and it was the first result
And it generally works pretty well. In the law, the government lays out rough things it wants to see (e.g. access restrictions, auditing logs, etc) + penalties (financial and otherwise) and then lets the industry find a way to meet them. Furthermore, there's a legal distinction between willful and accidental non-compliance.
It's absolutely added cost, but generally seems to accomplish its privacy intent.