MEDICAL IDENTITY THEFT

From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Bronx Accident Lawyer)

Lose your wallet and you cancel your credit cards. Do you give any thought to your health insurance card? A thief or finder of your health insurance card can steal far more than with a misappropriated credit card.

What's the hurt? Credit cards are well protected. Signature required. Magnetic strips. Special codes. Maybe even the card user's photograph.

Health insurance cards tend to be simple pieces of plastic with the benefits holder's name and account number and, usually, lots of "800" numbers to call for claim information. Yet there exists something like a $70 billion problem that costs insurers for fraud. An expense that can only be passed down to you, the person whose money and/or labor pays the health care insurance premium.

There are different kinds of fraud at work.

In certain large cities, organized rings of thieves will steal medical identities and create phantom medical care providers. This phony provider or clinic will bill health care insurers such as Medicaid or Medicare aggressively for as long as they can get away with it. When caught or discovered they drain the money out of their business accounts and disappear. This leaves the person with the stolen identity in a bind. He or she may owe money for medical services not received. Also they have a falsified personal medical record, which impacts their ability to get future insurance or even a job.

Another manner of health care identity theft is where a person assumes your identity to get medical care. Frequently this would be for something expensive like surgery or dental care. Unscrupulous family members might even share a health care insurance card among themselves -- one brothr or sister helping another. Which is why smart medical providers ask to see their patient's driver's license or other proof of identity in addition to a health insurance card.

As with your credit card statement, carefully look over your health insurance Explanation of Benefit forms that shuold be mailed to you. Make sure the services listed were actually provided to you.

Finally, check your credit reports regularly, to see if collection efforts or judgments are recorded against you for fraudulent bills to your health insurance (for treatment not rendered to you), which are unpaid.  Besides not condoning the rip-off of medical insurance carriers -- which can bite us all on the butt when premiums increase -- you wish to avoid injury to your own credit.