Medical identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the country.
While you're probably well aware of identity theft and its impact on your credit, you may not be aware of a type of identify theft that can be even more harmful to you personally -- medical identity theft. You may not only end up with bills incurred by the person who steals your identity, but the crime can even prove fatal.
Medical identity theft is a crime that can cause great harm to its victims. Yet despite the profound risk it carries, it is the least studied and most poorly documented of the cluster of identity theft crimes. It is also the most difficult to fix after the fact, because victims have limited rights and recourses. Medical identity theft typically leaves a trail of falsified information in medical records that can plague victims’ medical and financial lives for years.
When someone uses your identity, incorrect information gets into your medical files. When you seek care you can end up with the wrong medical history, wrong blood type, wrong allergies and other errors that could end up being deadly for you.
In many cases the ID thieves steal your personal information to make money by filing fraudulent claims against your own health policy. Medical ID thieves often get your personal information, such as your health-insurance number and Social Security number, from employees at medical facilities. The information is then resold on the black market. Another way they get the information is to hack into medical databases. For example, at one medical clinic in Weston, Florida, a front desk clerk downloaded information of more than 1,100 Medicare patients and gave it to a cousin who made $2.8 million in false Medicare claims.
Many times you'll never know you are a victim of Medical ID theft, which can cost you thousands of dollars, unless you check your medical records closely. In most case you won't even know of the fraud until after the damage has been done.
As many as 500,000 Americans have been victims of medical identify theft, according to the World Privacy Forum. Medical identity theft is growing rapidly . The Federal Trade Commission received almost 19,500 reports of medical ID theft between January 1992 to April 2006. About one every four reports were received in 2006.
There are a number of ways Medical ID thieves steal your identity:
Bill your health plan for fake or inflated treatment claims. Often these crooks are doctors or other medical personnel who know how the insurance billing system works. Organized theft rings also are involved. Using stolen information they buy on the black market, they set up fake clinics to file bogus claims. They use your identity to buy prescription drugs. They then sell these prescriptions or use them to feed their own addictions. For example, dishonest pharmacists might bill your policy for narcotics or nurses may call in prescriptions in a patient's name but pick it up themselves or they get free treatment. Medical ID thieves who don't have their own health coverage can use your identity to get free medical treatment based on your policy. They sign into a hospital or clinic using your identity and your policy receives the bills.
Links:
http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/01/02/medical-identity-theft-fastest-growing-fraud-can-be-deadly/
http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/medicalidentitytheft.html