Why Chinese Hackers Would Want US Hospital Patient Data 171
itwbennett (1594911) writes In a follow-up to yesterday's story about the Chinese hackers who stole hospital data of 4.5 million patients, IDG News Service's Martyn Williams set out to learn why the data, which didn't include credit card information, was so valuable. The answer is depressingly simple: people without health insurance can potentially get treatment by using medical data of one of the hacking victims. John Halamka, chief information officer of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and chairman of the New England Healthcare Exchange Network, said a medical record can be worth between $50 and $250 to the right customer — many times more than the amount typically paid for a credit card number, or the cents paid for a user name and password. "If I am one of the 50 million Americans who are uninsured ... and I need a million-dollar heart transplant, for $250 I can get a complete medical record including insurance company details," he said.
Re:uh-huh (Score:4, Interesting)
This seem preposterous.
As a person in the medical billing field, I've regularly seen faked insurance cards, but they're easy to weed out thanks to electronic eligibility verification. Given that people will walk right up to the counter with their "Homana" insurance card printed on cheap paper, I can absolutely believe that we've treated people who claim to be Jane Doe, have an insurance card with Jane Doe's name, group and policy # on it, and know Jane Doe's DOB (sufficient information to pass eligibility verification). The only way the insurance company would figure it out is if the real Jane Doe was being seen by a doctor somewhere else that day, or if Jane Doe actually read any of the paperwork she gets past the line "This is not a bill".
Re:I'm not so sure.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe, but maybe not. I know someone whose identity was stolen and used by a criminal who was arrested. Despite the fact that the guy looks NOTHING like the criminal in question (different height, weight, skin color, etc), he found himself fired from his job for having a criminal record and harassed by police officers who just assumed he was the criminal. It took him years to get anyone to even listen to him and even then it took years to fix the problem as one fixed system would get "re-infected" as the bad data flowed back in from other systems.
Bulls3#!t (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't being collected for individuals. That's to much work. It will be used for bulk insurance fraud. A portfolio of bogus patients to be mixed into a doctors insurance billing.
Re:Less likely government (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm amazed at how skillfully the finance and corporate community has ingrained "identity theft" into consumer's minds. (And yes, I'm using "consumer" instead of "citizen" on purpose.)
If someone uses a fake credit card to buy items from a store, they have defrauded the store and the credit card company. It should be irrelevant whether the name on that card is fake, or belongs to some other uninvolved third party.
And yet, the industry has managed to redirect the mindset and conversation to shift much of the blame onto that uninvolved third party, making them feel like they are the ones violated by this process, and leaving them with the mess to clean up while those defrauded only write off their losses after the third party goes through hoops to "prove" their own innocence. Meanwhile, there's rarely effort to go after the actual criminal at all.
I understand the reasons why there is a credit market, but I reject the notion that what was once called fraud, perpetrated against a business that is responsible for their losses, is now theft against an unrelated third party that is guilty until proven innocent by the corporate megaliths that run the financial world.
Re:Time for medicare for all in the usa (Score:4, Interesting)
Take a look at this comparison [wikipedia.org]. Even though the US government pays much more per capita than Canada it does not cover everybody it while Canada does. Here is a possible reason;
A 1999 report found that after exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0% of health care expenditures in the United States, as compared with 16.7% of health care expenditures in Canada.
Single payer systems make administration much simpler.
Re:Less likely government (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree that it is fraud and that it's ridiculous that the result of Identity theft is up to the affected person to prove/clean up. I don't think that the name "Identity theft" puts the blame on the victim, though, any more than "car theft" puts the blame on the owner of the stolen car. (Before someone complains "identity theft isn't theft because you still have your identity", imagine if someone kept "borrowing" your car while you slept but returned it every morning with more scratches and dings. You'd still have use of it when you wanted it, but the value of the car would drop quickly and it would be up to you to pay the repair costs. This is what identity thieves do to your credit.)
Sadly, as was my experience during my identity theft, the companies just don't care. The credit card companies see the fraud as something to write off as a cost of doing business and then they move on. Capital One actively blocked both me and the police from investigating. They told me "we can't give you the address on the card with your name on it because if you go and kill the person, we'd be liable." They would just ignore when the police called. (Calls routed to a voicemail box that was never answered.) The credit agencies are even worse. They see your credit file as a profit engine. New lines of credit on your credit file help drive their profits. Anything that blocks this is bad for business. So protecting against identity theft is bad for business. As far as the fraud goes? Well, that's the little people's concern, not theirs. (I was lucky that I caught it when I did or I'd have been fixing the problem for a long, long time.)
Re:Uninsured? (Score:5, Interesting)
Obama, one of the better republican presidents we have had.
Hopefully we get a real liberal next time instead of a poser.
Re:Uninsured? (Score:5, Interesting)
In the 1930's the right cried 'socialism' to the building of the Grand Coulee dam. It was supposed to boost farming in the middle of Washington State. It was way more electricity and water than would be needed (and we really didn't need that much extra food production at the time).
A few years later WWII happened, and it went from 'socialist' to 'forward thinking' when it allowed the mass production of aluminum for the war effort. (oddly the biggest socialist program in the country, the freeway system, met little opposition as it meant pork for every state, so like you said, they liked it, so it wasn't socialism)
Fortunately for us living here, it currently means very inexpensive electricity (8.8 cents per kwh per my last bill).