Your Money ; Scam Alert
Your medical records are very appealing to identity thieves
Not What the Doctor Ordered By Sid Kirchheimer
How to protect yourself
; Urge your health care pro-
viders to ask patients for
photo IDs.
; Ask your doctors to make
copies of everything in your
medical file (you may have to
pay for them).
; Read every letter you get
from insurers, including those
that say “this is not a bill.” If you
see a doctor’s name or treat-
ment date that isn’t familiar,
call the billing physician and
your insurer.
; Ask for a list of benefits paid
in your name and an “accounting of disclo-
sures,” which shows who got your records.
; Monitor your credit report at www.Annual
CreditReport.com. If you see medical billing er-
rors, contact your insurer and the three credit
bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
; If you lose your insurance card, contact
your insurance provider. And don’t carry
your Medicare card in your wallet; make a
photocopy and obscure the last
four digits of the Social Secu-
rity number.
; Avoid Internet and storefront
offers of free treatment and
supplies. ;
Some do it out of need, steal- ing others’ health coverage to get medical treatment
they can’t afford. But for most,
it’s greed.
Medical records are the mother
lode for identity thieves, who call
them “fulls” because “they contain
everything that’s needed to estab-
lish someone else’s identity—Social
Security numbers, addresses, some-
times payment accounts,” explains
security analyst Robert Vamosi
of Javelin Strategy & Research in
Pleasanton, Calif.
Javelin’s 2010 Identity Fraud
Survey Report finds that medical identity
theft has more than doubled since 2008. And
the National Study on Medical Identity Theft
by the Ponemon Institute estimates that about
a million Americans were victimized by this
kind of theft within the past two years.
Another half a million, the Ponemon report
finds, lent their insurance cards to uninsured
loved ones in “friendly fraud” cases and ended
up with big medical bills.
No safety net for victims
“This isn’t like credit card fraud, where the
bank eats the losses,” says institute founder
Larry Ponemon. “With medical identity theft,
victims often have to pay for care they didn’t
receive. Others lose their health insurance be-
cause of the incident, or need to pay higher
premiums to restore it.” On average, he says,
it costs more than $20,000 out of pocket to
resolve a case of medical identity theft.
Medical
records
are the
mother
lode for
identity
thieves.
Sid Kirchheimer is the author
of Scam-Proof Your Life, pub-
lished by AARP Books/Sterling.
ASK SID
; Which consumer complaints are the most common?
f the more than 1.3 million
consumer complaints filed
with the Federal Trade Com-
mission in 2009, one in five in-
volved identity theft, making it the top
individual category. Debt collection
was second, with almost 120,000 com-
plaints—or 9 percent—followed by gripes
about Internet services, shop-at-home
and catalog sales, and counterfeit check
scams. There has been nearly a sixfold
increase in overall complaints to the FTC
since 2000. Per capita, Nevada residents
file the most fraud complaints; Florida
generates the most about identity theft.
; Send queries to Ask Sid, 601 E St. N. W.,
Washington, DC 20049, or send them by
e-mail to asksid@aarp.org.
