statute applied to covered sentities, health care providers, hospitals, physicians, pharma pharmacyin pharmacyinpharmacy, health plans and health care clearinghouses. there's also a term called business associates that are under the statute. these are folks that help them in their operations. i think the cleanest example of that is a billing company. you may have a small physician office group that deals with 20 different health insurers and keeping up with the billing requirements can be difficult to do. they hire a billing company to do that. then they have to transmit personal health information to the billing company about their patient so they can properly bill it. initially all the statute required was a contract between that hospital or physician's group and the business associates showing how the business associate was going to keep that data private, keep it safe, the protections in place for it. now since 2009, business associates are under the statute themselves. and the government can force against them. and it's a much different ball game for business associates. >> let's talk about that co