Medical Identity Theft

Medical identity theft is often overlooked on television and in the newspapers, but is growing extremely rapidly. People are unable to get medical coverage easily and desperate times can drive many people to take very desperate measures.

Unless you have a medical condition, you could keep your insurance card in your wallet or purse and rarely ever use it. You might not even notice if it happened to disappear. When medical identity theft occurs, you may never even know it happened until its way too late. The complications it can cause can threaten the life of you or your loved ones.

Blood types can be changed, diagnoses you never actually got can be put into your records and much more very scary things could happen. Imagine getting into an accident and losing a lot of blood, not realizing an identity theft had occurred and now your records show your blood type as A instead of B. This could have a serious impact on the outcome of your treatment. If you get a pint of the wrong type of blood, serious problems or death may occur.

You also may end up with extremely high medical bills. If someone bills your insurance for a broken leg, you may be responsible for much of the bill. Repairing medical identity theft errors can be a very long and complicated process. If someone received treatment somewhere, that information may be shared all around the country. Even if you change it, it could take a very long time to correct each and every place where the misinformaton exists, and that puts you at great risk in case of an accident.

To help prevent all of this, keep detailed records of your medical bills and insurance statements. Always be proactive where your persoonal informaton is concerned, even your medical information.

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