Medical Identity Theft can be Costly to your Health
Medical identity theft, by definition, is what results when a thief steals someone else’s social security number or health insurance information in order to obtain medical benefits of their own, particularly in the form of hospital visits and prescription drugs. The two facets of medical identity theft involve financial breaches of security and healthcare fraud. Long-term detrimental effects can easily result from this increasingly prevalent type of identity theft.
Medical identity theft is not as easy to detect or reverse as are the more common forms of identity fraud. This type of identity theft has left victims with tainted health records, medical histories, and diagnoses. Victims may receive bills for medications, tests and even surgeries that they never had done. In order to ensure your own adequate identity theft protection, always be on the look out for medical service bills, records and notations that are not and were never applicable to your own history. If at any time you receive a bill for a service you never received, or you’re asked questions regarding an unknown medical condition, you’ve probably been victimized. Some victims of medical identity theft have even received faulty blood transfusions due to their records indicating the wrong blood type. So not only can this crime ruin your credit, it can also be potentially life-threatening.
Thieves often fail to pay their shares of insurance deductibles and co-pays, leaving their victims to receive credit reports detailing unrecognizable medical debts. Having a working knowledge of identity theft prevention techniques will help you protect yourself from this damaging crime. It is estimated that 1 in 6 Americans don’t have insurance, making it very tempting for some people to engage in medical identity theft, especially when emergency situations arise. If, heaven forbid, someone uses your personal data in an emergency care facility, they are very likely to get away with it as these facilities cannot refuse care and are less likely to catch the error in the first place.
To date, there are no government statistics as to the number of medical identity fraud cases occurring annually in the United States, but insurance providers and hospitals agree that this type of theft is presenting itself more and more. Approximately 250,000 Americans have been victims of medical identity theft thus far, according to the World Privacy Forum. If you think your medical records and insurance data are safe, never underestimate a thief’s ability to get their hands on your information. And because insurance companies share patient information, should you decide to switch to another provider in the future, your tarnished medical history just might follow you.
Should a medical identity thief ever use your good name to seek treatment, you could be refused insurance coverage later–depending on the treatment they sought. It’s no secret that insurance agencies can and will refuse coverage to people with histories of certain drug use or pre-existing conditions.
Here are a few medical identity theft protection tips for you and your loved ones to keep in mind:
- Any notices from your insurance carrier should be opened immediately.
- If you’re ever informed of or billed for treatment you didn’t receive, dispute it right away.
- Always shred these documents before throwing them in the trash.
- Be diligent about checking your credit report and dispute any unknown medical accounts with credit reporting agencies, as well as your insurance company.
- If you receive mail from a doctor’s office or hospital where you haven’t been a patient, don’t just assume it’s junk. Open these immediately, as they could be bills for services to which you weren’t privy.
- Let credit agencies know so they can put fraud alerts on your file. Also let your insurance company know right away.
If you lead a hectic lifestyle and don’t especially want to spend your free time placing fraud alerts, ordering credit reports, opting out of junk mailing lists, and can’t fathom spending months or years trying to restore your identity if stolen, then consider doing what I did…enroll in LifeLock and turn the burden of protecting your life over to them!
~ Denise Richardson, Author of Give Me Back My Credit
