| Health: Health Care Costs and Health Insurance |
Medical identity theft is a growing problem.
The problem of medical identity theft is on the rise, and it's often an inside job, experts say. Between 250,000 and 500,000 people have their medical identities stolen each year, said Pam Dixon, who heads the World Privacy Forum, a non-profit group that helps victims of identity theft. Most of the perpetrators are "people working in the health-care sector"-for instance, billing or housecleaning staff or clerical workers at large hospitals who have access to confidential patient information such as Social Security and health insurance policy numbers, said Dixon, considered the nation's leading authority on the topic. "This is the fastest-growing form of identity theft in America today," said James Quiggle, director of communications for the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud in Washington.
Women are neglecting their health due to the current economic climate.
A new survey released today by the National Women's Health Resource Center (NWHRC) highlights another troubling aspect of the current financial crisis: many women have failed to seek health care for themselves or their families to save money.... "Today's financial crisis and increasing health costs are clearly impacting women's decisions around health care, and their physical and emotional well-being," said Elizabeth Battaglino Cahill, RN, executive director of NWHRC. "It's hard to stay calm and relaxed given our hectic lives -- even in the best of times. But women need to understand that skimping on health care to save them money may cost them more in the long run. They also need to learn how to better manage their stress, both about their health and their finances."
DECEMBER 2, 2008, Rising Costs Prompt Women to Neglect Health, PNN Online, http://www.pnnonline.org/article.php?sid=8557
[posted 1/22/2009]
When women have to get individual health insurance they face much higher premiums than men.
In a recent report, the National Women's Law Center found that women - both young and middle-aged - pay dramatically more in most states for individual health insurance than men. Only 12 states offer gender discrimination protection, only eight offer protections for age and only 15 offer protections for health status. According to the report, insurers in nine states and the District of Columbia can legally reject applicants who are survivors of domestic violence. In many states, insurers can reject women simply for having undergone caesarean sections in the past. The severity of the problem differs from state to state and from age group to age group.... Three-quarters of the nation's women are largely protected from gender discrimination in health insurance, as they get it either from their employers or through public programs. Meanwhile, 18 percent of women have no insurance at all, and 7 percent have individual plans. Taking the gender gap out of health insurance policies may make them far more attractive to the 18 percent without insurance.
NOVEMBER 4, 2008, Gender Equity a Premium for Healthcare, by Derrick Z. Jackson, The Boston Globe, boston.com, http://www.boston.com
Full Report: SEPTEMBER 2008, Nowhere to Turn: How the Individual Health Insurance Market Fails Women, National Women's Law Center, http://action.nwlc.org/site/DocServer/NowhereToTurn.pdf?docID=601 [posted 11/6/2008]
Low-income seniors are being targeted by insurance agents selling Medicare Advantage Plans that they may not need.
Many said they had been tricked into enrolling in private Medicare plans, sometimes without realizing it. The chief justice of Alabama, Sue Bell Cobb, said that her 83-year-old mother, Thera R. Bell, had been "duped into signing up" for a private Medicare plan. "The salesman absolutely misrepresented the coverage by Advantra Freedom," Chief Justice Cobb said in an interview. "He said the plan was a supplement to Medicare and would provide dental care, but he failed to tell her that she would lose her regular Medicare coverage and that her family physician was not a provider." Nationwide, enrollment in the private plans, known as Medicare Advantage plans, has soared, to more than 8.9 million in November [2007], from 6.1 million at the end of 2005. The staff of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent federal panel, said this month that it had found evidence of hard-sell tactics in interviews with a dozen groups of beneficiaries around the country. Most people who sign up for private Medicare plans are locked in for a full year, but many low-income beneficiaries are allowed to switch plans each month. For that reason, some agents tend to focus on them, the Medicare commission said.
DECEMBER 17, 2007, For Recipients of Medicare, The Hard Sell, by Robert Pear, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com. [posted 3/26/2008]
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