[Interior. Late night. The only light comes from a computer monitor on a desk in the corner.]
[Sound effects] Faint helicopter blades, quickly growing louder, indicating imminent arrival. As they close in, sounds resolve into three separate choppers setting down. Followed by gravel crunching under a large number of black wingtip shoes spreading around the house.[/Sound effects]
Glass and wood explode into the house as dark suited men race in through the doors and windows. One of them slams a set of neatly stapled papers on the desk in front of a cowering man.
[Dark Suit] You thought this was acceptable? You thought we would just take your…your lies and swallow whole?
[Computer Man] I…I…I’m sorry, I didn’t realize… I just wanted to make sure my family and I got decent medical insurance
Hollywood loves to spin fantastic tales and we go to the theaters in droves to watch them. Sometimes, though, a film hits closer to the truth than anyone expected. As my father said after reviewing the information that prompted me to write this, “Sounds like Big Brother is already here.”
Just who is Big Brother and and why do I say that medical privacy doesn’t exist? Take a gander at an outfit named Medical Information Bureau, or MIB, The Insurance Buyer´s “Advocate” as they call themselves in big type at the top of their homepage. Of course, they do enclose the word advocate in quotation marks, which is probably a good thing since it is only responsible to the insurance companies that own, operate, and make use of it. And have for the 101 years since its inception.
What does MIB do? It collects data on doctor and hospital visits and prescriptions from the insurance claims made. The records are used to evaluate any application you make for life or medical insurance policies. Now that a bunch of Sun Alumni (including myself) have or are coming to the end of our COBRA coverage, we’re finding this comes into play. Allegedly the MIB report is not to be used as the sole means of evaluating applications but who knows if this is . Trying to sneak through the application’s requirement that you list your medical history in excruciating detail to qualify?
Don’t bother because they’ll find out anyway and just make you look bad. Of course, like any other human endeavor, the MIB is subject to errors. Until the government forced them, though, they wouldn’t admit this simple fact and allow plain old consumers a chance to review and correct their own dossier. Even if you could avoid this scrutiny, think about what that would say to a potential insurer (or other user of this data); consider the parallel situation of trying to get credit–a mortgage, a credit card, and auto loan–if there’s no file on you at Equifax et al. Just not gonna happen.
You think, Hey, the law protects me and my privacy! What about doctor-patient confidentiality? Movies and TV shows certainly use this plot point often enough to drive it into our collective consciousness. Guess what, you sign that right away nearly every time you sign up with a new doctor (the so-called blanket waivers) or apply for insurance. And whenever our beloved corporations deem it useful, they’ll get an exemption (from antitrust or privacy concerns) written in as a never-debated amendment during some dark of night, get the damn bill done already committee session.
And it gets worse. Even though MIB claims that only insurance companies have access to their data, increasingly insurance companies are part of a larger financial conglomerate and presumably the bank owned by the same corporation can get into the system this way. So when you apply for that 30 year mortgage the bank can factor in the risk of you not living that long. One story, possibly apocryphal, tells of a banker in Boston who called in loans on all his customers who had diagnoses of cancer. Pretty slimy, but not illegal yet, though one wonders how else, other than through the MIB (or another group just like it), the banker could know which customers have cancer.
Now the nice folks in the PR department at the Medical Information Bureau have their own spin on this and, since their professionals, the spin sounds good at least at first. The core rationale seems to be along the lines of “Why should honest people, who report all their illnesses, injuries, and prescriptions, pay more for insurance than the dishonest folks who want to sneak passed the underwriters?” Fair is fair, after all, and we all should pay–or be allowed to buy–insurance based on the truth of our medical history.
I have a feeling that most Americans (and Canadians, since MIB is at work there too) would not feel that opening their medical history kimono to all and sundry is justified on this basis. How about you? Are you comfortable knowing that for $9.00, anyone who knows a few simple facts about you can get a copy of your MIB record?
BillSaysThis 