As an aside tidbit, what AETNA does that they don’t tell you about (and I’m sure every other health insurance company does), is USE a “health rating” company to get around the Health Privacy Laws. This is similar to a credit rating and ought to scare the crap out of everyone. I found out about this from an AETNA employee when I was trying to get insurance as COBRA was way too expensive for an unemployed, just divorced, full-time stay-at-home-mom with 4 minor kids.
My doctor had prescribed a drug, for an off-label use. I paid CASH. No insurance involved. Either of three places that I used for prescriptions, fed this drug info to a database: Walgreens, CVS or Target. When I was trying to get insurance, the three agents I had spoke to kept insisting to ME that I had diabetes, which I did NOT and never had, and had repeatedly every year had a glucose test that was fine. The fourth AETNA agent slipped up and admitted why, because their info said that in 2006 I had taken (fill in the blank) drug, which one of the uses is diabetes. I asked after being shocked at the info, how the hell did they have that info as I had NEVER BEEN INSURED BY AETNA AND HAD NEVER USED INSURANCE FOR THAT ONE-TIME PRESCRIPTION, and I HAD PAID CAST. She (AETNA) then told me about their “health rating” database that they subscribe too and how it doesn’t violate the health privacy laws. This was around 2008 or so.
oops, can’t blame CAST instead of CASH on the CATS jumping over my keyboard. I own the typo.
Very good point you bring up and worthy of further discussion / action by our FR community.
There are 880,000 healthcare data suppliers (HC insurers, providers, pharmacies, etc) that take every bit of your information and sell it to anyone within the HC realm.
No one is tracking or regulating this.
You have no say whatsoever.
The fishbowl has gotten a bit smaller, no?
The Only independent org addressing this is
http://patientprivacyrights.org/
Its founded by a doctor who was shocked to find that HIPAA applied to her, but not commercial healthcare data sharing entities.
See her TEDtalk on the subject in the link provided.