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Your Medical Treatment History Is For Sale
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Aug 05, 2008 03:32 PM
from the slippery-cliff dept.
from the slippery-cliff dept.
PizzaFace writes "The Washington Post reports on the booming business of selling your medical treatment records. Today these are mainly records of your prescriptions, but the data warehouses will soon have records of your lab tests, too. The companies selling these records make it easy for insurance companies to avoid risk by assigning each person a health score, similar to a credit score, or by flagging items in each person's history that suggest chronic or potentially expensive health problems. It's not just for insurers, either; employers who check applicants' credit scores will surely be interested in their health scores as well."
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Health care, what health care? (Score:4, Insightful)
Here you can RTFA all on one page [washingtonpost.com].
Re:Health care, what health care? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe I'm missing something and there's a loop-hole, but AFAIK In Canada selling this information is illegal, and I thought that medical records were confidential in the US as well (apparently not). In Canada patients and health care professionals have client/doctor confidentiality similar to client / lawyer confidentiality. A doctor's office would lose it's practice if it handed over information to anyone without the patient's consent.
Of course there's downsides to our system too. Since health care is public doctor's can only charge so much and thus the only way to increase their income is to get more and more patients so doctors are over-worked and the waiting rooms are always packed with huge waits. Plus more and more of our top doctors move to the US where they can earn more. There's gotta be some kind of happy medium where everyone wins.
Parent
"thus the only way to increase their income [...]" (Score:5, Informative)
"thus the only way to increase their income is to get more and more patients"
Not really.. they can go work in a private clinic, or they can work in another country (as you already pointed out). Thank goodness there's many doctors who don't particularly care about increasing their income - who got into the job because they can genuinely help fellow man and all that sort of altruistic stuff that we, as a society, are far too eager to write off and laugh at. These are doctors who will give treatment for free if needed (and sometimes if not*), instead of some doctors only giving free treatment while on a P.R. trip to a poor country (not dissing the gesture, just dissing the motives).
And, let's be honest, they don't really -need- the higher income because they don't have to worry about multi-million dollar malpractice suits looming around every single corner and the insurance that goes with it.
I'm not saying that 'socialized' healthcare is panacea.. far from it.. but that "happy medium where everyone wins" should not be led by the desire to make more money - focus instead on reducing or eliminating the negatives you mentioned.
* I had a nasty bruised-looking toe - walked (well, semi-hopped) straight into the hospital (hadn't registered for a GP yet after moving), got to see a doc in 10 minutes who had an x-ray made 5 minutes later 'just to be safe', determined that it was indeed broken as he suspected, got me a splint, had a nurse put it on while he moved on to another patient, came back to do a quick check to make sure it was on right, and sent me on my way. That's it. Didn't send me past administration for my insurance info on my way out, and certainly not on my way in.. I was a guy with a nasty bruised-looking toe who needed to have a look at it done by a doc and that's all they cared about. Thanks, MCH. I know this is anecdotal, and I'm all too familiar with waiting lists as well, but it's not nearly as bad as some make it out to be. Being on a waiting list for an organ, however, does suck - but that seems to be the case regardless of medical system; short of countries where there's a lively 'grey'/black market in organs. Yikes.
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Re:Health care, what health care? (Score:5, Informative)
"Since health care is public doctor's can only charge so much and thus the only way to increase their income is to get more and more patients so doctors are over-worked and the waiting rooms are always packed with huge waits. Plus more and more of our top doctors move to the US where they can earn more."
I see you bought into the propaganda. The governments allocate a certain portion of the budget to GP expenses (ie: Doctors office visits). Which means, Doctors can only see so many patients before the budget is blown. Waiting room times have severely diminished thanks to Alberta led procedures. And because of caps, they can't hire more Doctors.
The Provincial Governments don't increase this funding when population grows - hence they kept saying it was 'unsustainable' (and run Provincial surpluses cause they can't count!). And people bought the BS. Too bad Slashdot doesn't allow attachments, because the Conference Board of Canada has some eye opening reports that contradict your memes. And links are useless, as the CBoC is a for-pay site.
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Re:Health care, what health care? (Score:4, Insightful)
...something other than anecdotal?
I seriously hope that you don't come down with argyria.
Parent
Re:Health care, what health care? (Score:5, Insightful)
Business and medicine are a terrible combination. Many herbal and traditional treatments do work. Many don't. How can we possibly figure out which is which?
Through the honest and open application of the Scientific Method! Big Business became clearly deleterious to health care when it became evident (many years ago) that they actively discouraged the investigation of treatments that were not convenient for their profits.
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Re:Health care, what health care? (Score:5, Interesting)
Generally, if something claims to cure EVERYTHING, it really can't. And quite often cures nothing.
My problem with "colloidal silver" is that the proponents of it claim it cures everything... prostate enlargement... cystic fibrosis.... lukemia, depression, skin rash.... cataracts, uhm.. what else have I heard....
Oh and it will bring your grandma back to life, right, I forgot that one.
The problem with claims like that is that they're completely and utterly absurd.
What, exactly does it do?
Has there ever been a double-blind study done by an unbiased research organization (such as a publicly funded university laboratory) that you can cite?
I'm curious...
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Re:Health care, what health care? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because on a long enough timeline, the chance that you won't get sick approaches 0.
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What Natural Selection Selects (Score:5, Insightful)
If our society were based on blugeoning each other with clubs, this would be a relevant argument. We'd need the specific quality of physical strength and resilience to survive. But the fact is that people who are "sickly" (to use your word) can make important contributions to society exactly because the aspects of the person that is required to make those contributions is often unrelated to the health issue they may confront. Look at Stephen Hawking for example. Nothing wrong with his brain, so as long as the essential aspects of his body are functionally maintained, he can continue to make his contribution. And even when reasoning in some sort of cold/mercenary way, the cost of maintaining such a person may be much less than the cost of losing such a person's potential contribution.
Besides, natural selection is intensely focused on the high order bit--whether people survive to breeding age at all. It's not very concerned with selecting for good writers, philosphers, mathematicians, teachers, etc. Nor does it appear to care a whole lot about diseases that come up after breeding age. So the argument about the gene pool being affected by caring for the so-called "sickly" seems bogus given that a lot of people who we care for are older than breeding age and do not, at that point, contribute to the gene pool.
Natural selection isn't creating some noble super-race. It favors the strong, but also the violent and the crafty. It looks only at outcome; it doesn't moralize about tactics. And its measure of outcome seems, by modern theory, limited narrowly to "has offspring ready to play the game anew". That's a possible theory of "good", but not the only possible theory. It seems just a little limiting, in fact. Which is why society tries to circumvent it through conscious thought and group policy, for better or worse.
Parent
Re:Health care, what health care? (Score:4, Informative)
And to play devil's advocate to your devil's advocate what happens to you if your good health turns out not to be as good as you think it is?
I don't think someone should be made to pay higher healthcare costs for stuff that isn't his fault. But I think it should be fair game on lifestyle choices. If you smoke or drink then I think you should pay more in to the "system."
The really sad part I see is people seem to think the healthcare in general sucks. Which I don't see as true. Medicine in general is the best it has ever been. What sucks is the bureaucracy and the bullshit that as built up around it.
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Re:Health care, what health care? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's immediately possible to equate your devil's advocacy to the inability to have empathy for others.
Your good health is nice, and it is also likely to be transient for reasons other than good actions you have taken yourself. Even if you've been a bit of a slut and got HIV (or an other STD), or let yourself become obese (with incumbent diabetes and arteriosclerosis), or have smoked like a fiend, you're still a human, and we still want you to live. Really. Those that don't, having no empathy, are in fact sociopathic and by a component of its definition.
So, Satan, fsck off.
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Why socialized health care should be implemented (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone with a very painful, debilitating chronic health condition (very active Crohn's Disease), you should assist in paying for my health care because you're part of a society that has made euthanasia illegal and severely demonized suicide (indeed, were I to attempt it, I would likely be institutionalized). Hence, as society has taken away my only alternatives, it has an obligation to provide me with access to the requisite medical procedures and drugs.
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Re:Health care, what health care? (Score:5, Insightful)
We also need to remove the requirements for surgeons to have to go through extensive training to be doctors.
This, quite possibly, is the stupidest thing I've ever read on Slashdot. And that's saying quite a lot.
Parent
HIPPA (Score:5, Informative)
Sell my medical records and my lawyer will be in touch with your lawyer. See Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act [wikipedia.org]
Re:HIPPA (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
A Non-Issue. (Score:5, Insightful)
Car insurance knows how many accidents you've had. Home insurance knows what claims you've made. All the insurance companies know your criminal record.
Health records may be private - you don't particularly want your neighbors to know about it. But the company that is insuring you certainly has a right to know what type of risk they're insuring - and just like auto insurance your cost should reflect it.
At the same time, health care is something that is a necessity. So if they price it out of range, how do you protect yourself? Removing preventive care due to cost and substituting emergency care in it's place is a horrible solution, but if it's priced out of range, that is what may happen.
This is why the government is going to have to step into health care in some way. It's in the Health Insurance company's best interests to not insurance people that are high risk. In a free market, those people will end up being uninsured.
I hate government intervention in any market, but I don't see any way around it. You can walk to the store and work. You can't perform an appendectomy on yourself.
but but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Healthcare rationing! Long waiting lists! Socialism!
Of course, healthcare in the US is already rationed (just according to your ability to pay for it) and you already have to wait for procedures and tests (like the week and a half it took my wife to get the insurance company and various doctors involved to schedule an MRI that everyone agreed she needed).
Insurance companies are probably the worst type of organization to have making healthcare decisions.
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Re:A Non-Issue. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:A Non-Issue. (Score:5, Insightful)
At the same time, health care is something that is a necessity. So if they price it out of range, how do you protect yourself?
That's why the civilized world has universal health care.
I hate government intervention in any market
The health care "market" is not a free market, as I found out in April after my vitrectomy (link may not be sfw) [slashdot.org]. The prescription eye drops I had to take after the surgery varied widely in price from pharmacy to pharmacy, but my co-pay was the same no matter where I boiught it. In the end I got it at the closest drug store, which turned out to be the second most expensive.
I can only get insurance my employer provides. When the market isn't free, government SHOULD intervene.
My best friend died from lack of insurance. RIP Jim Dawson, 1952-1992.
Parent
Re:mod parent up (Score:4, Informative)
wrong.
wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
repeat after me; wrong.
why, you wonder, are you wrong? in a system where market participants place performance, or more properly, are bound by law to place performance, above all other measures of success it is plain that the welfare of the consumer is not considered unless also mandated by law, and even then will be considered less important than the business's performance if there are not sufficiently dissuasive penalties.
for further reference see RailTrack [wikipedia.org].
Parent
oh gee what a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why anyone would be surprised that an organization the goal of which is to maximize profits would do its best to cut costs (paying for your medical care) and maximize income (acquiring the money of you, your employer and the government i.e. other taxpayers as health-care premiums). You'd have to fail Logic 101 to think things would be otherwise.
On the other hand, what the Washington Post will suggest is the "solution" to this nonsense is even more illogical: you should give all your health-care money to another organization, Congress, which is also most interested in something other than your health -- namely, keeping political power. What do you suppose will influence Congressmen when they decide what to do with your health-care money, and how to provide you with health-care? Altruism? Your actual happiness? Using your money most efficiently? Hmmm. Is that how it works now, when Congress debates how copyright should work in the Digital Age, or whether it makes sense to subsidize turning corn into ethanol (instead of food)?
Once again, we're confronted with the nasty little fact o' life that the only agent that will ever have only your interests at heart is you. Given that, which of these three options makes sense?
(A) Give your money to a big insurance company, run by strangers with Harvard MBAs seeking to maximize profits for shareholders, then ask for some of it back when you want some health care.
(B) Give your money to Congress, run by smooth-talking lawyers seeking to maximize their terms in office through maintaining access to the massive amounts of cash necessary for perennial re-election, then ask for some of it back when you want some health care.
(C) Keep your money, and spend it on health care when and where you choose.
Strangely enough, people keep choosing (A) and (B), under the amazing delusion that somehow if you make all the transactions really complicated -- shuffle the dollar bills around fast enough -- we can receive more value in health care than we pay out in actual money. Proof that the bitter lesson of TANSTAAFL has not been learned by most adults.
Re:oh gee what a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
(C) Keep your money, and spend it on health care when and where you choose.
(D) Build a quality, government-run universal health care system, like those found in virtually the entire western world, and watch quality of life rise while health care costs plummet.
But I can see why you wouldn't want that...
Parent
Us health insurance companies - perfect argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Well sounds great except (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds reasonable at first, but think for a minute: why would your doctor order a blood test to see if you have cholesterol problems if he or she had already put you on cholesterol medication because he or she knew you had cholesterol problems? Even if you switched doctors, your new doctor should know the results of that test, and at the very least you need to tell him you're on the medication. In other words: your doctor is going to know already.
At best this is a flimsy excuse to invade your privacy and raise your insurance premiums: "By reducing wasteful testing your doctor orders because he/she is an idiot, we save you money, so don't worry about invasions of privacy or your rates going up
But there's another issue that this seems to raise: accountants at your HMO second guessing your doctors. Lets say in the example above your doctor wants to test your cholesterol to see how effective it is or if you actually should still be taking it. Your HMO says "Hey, no, we're not paying for that, we know he has high cholesterol because he's on cholesterol medication, we don't need a test!"
It seems like this could be sorted out with common sense, and like the insurance agencies would have some idea of what's reasonable and what's wasteful, but they don't always. The article mentions that often medications that can be perscribed for two or more different purposes, and the insurance agencies often have a hard time understanding something that simple, denying the woman life insurance because they were convinced she was depressed, when she was actually taking prozac for hot flashes.
If they don't belive the doctor that she was postmenopausal instead of depressed, can we really expect them to use information NOT coming from the doctor correctly, in our best interests?
Re:Alarmism (Score:5, Insightful)
Alarmism
Far from it, look at the credit score mess and where it has gotten us.
What's a credit score? It's a score about how much you love being in debt, you get in debt and pay to get more debt and pay on time to get even more debt, etc. How is that relevant to you being able to get a job? It's beyond me.
What makes you think this system won't be abused exactly like the FICO score if not even worse?
Can you imagine identity theft in this scenario? Oh boy oh boy, someone steals your identity and all of the sudden you lose your life insurance, the doctor _won't_ see you now because you lost your health insurance, and all of that is because someone bought a heart medication with your info and your insurers dropped you immediately.
Isn't that similar to how credit scores work? Someone steals your identity messing up your score and all of the sudden _you_ are the criminal, universal default [wikipedia.org] on all of your accounts, collector calls who won't believe you, etc.
The whole "insurance" thing is a form of measured "gambling"/risk industry, that is: "I bet you won't die in 30 years", "I bet you won't get sick so much this year" or "I bet you won't get in a car accident".
Things like this health score significantly reduces that gambling element and turns it almost into "I'll insure you if and only if you don't need the insurance", which just smells bad.
Finally, on a privacy stand point, the idea of even more of my information being thrown about out there doesn't sound that appealing to me.
What's the solution? I don't know. Maybe one day the system will collapse on its own weight or someone will come up with a better idea, but until that day comes, we'll be in this weird relationship with these middle-men characters.
Parent