Medical Identity Theft, Find Out How Your Life is at Risk

By: JW Dickens Posted on: 2008-10-09 ** Print Article ** ** Copy Article ** ** Email Article ** - Category Feed

Article Summary: When someone uses your personal information to collect money,prescription drugs, goods, or health services, it's called medical identity theft. It can cost you your life, find out how to protect your self.

This is part one of a five article series detailing the five forms of identity theft. When someone uses your personal information to collect money, prescription drugs, goods, or health services, it's called medical identity theft. Medical identity theft, "If someone shows up in an emergency room and this has happened to them, they could receive improper treatment, and that is a real problem," said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, a nonprofit research group.

Imagine you were in a car accident knocked unconscious and rushed to the hospital, nothing life threatening just a bad bump on the head and a pretty nasty cut on your leg. The paramedics stop the bleeding of your leg and you are rushed to the hospital. When you get there, still unconscious, they get your name from your driver's license and pull up your record because you were in the emergency room last week with severe flu like symptoms. The doctor looks at the records and sees your blood type is A+ and orders a blood transfusion because your blood pressure is low and you may have lost a lot of blood from the cut. You receive the pint of blood the doctor ordered and within the hour you are dead. What happened? Medical identity theft is what happened. Nothing serious right, people loose blood and get transfusions all time. What you did not know is someone broke into a furniture store not to steal furniture but to steal the filled out credit applications with your name, address, telephone number, social security number and your annual income on it. This information was then sold and you become a victim of medical identity theft. Back to how you end up dead. The records said you are blood type A+ when you are really B- with the wrong blood type that is the end of you. This is a worse case scenario, but it is possible. Other consequences of medical identity theft are being denied medical insurance for a condition that you don't have, getting stuck with a huge hospital bill, ruined credit or being denied a job.

Take the unfortunate case of Lind Weaver. She received a bill from a local hospital for the amputation of her right foot. This was a shock to her because she still has both of her feet. After some time of trying to persuade administrators to void the bill, Weaver finally had to walk into the facility and put both of her feet on the desk of the senior administrator. "Obviously, I have both of my feet," she said. This was enough to persuade the hospital to drop the charges but in the process discovered that the mistake wasn't a simple billing error. Weaver was a victim of medical identity theft. A fraudster had used her address, Social Security number, and even her insurance ID number, to have the expensive procedure performed. The repercussions of the medical identity theft didn't stop there. Weaver was hospitalized later for a hysterectomy, and the amputee's medical info was now mixed in with her own. She found this out after a nurse reviewed her chart and said, "I see you have diabetes." (she doesn't). With medical data being digitized and easily transmitted between medical facilities, Weaver is now scared that if she is ever rushed to a hospital, she could receive a transfusion with the wrong type of blood, or a medicine to which she's allergic. "I now live in fear that if something ever happened to me, I could get the wrong kind of medical treatment," she says.

Now that I have scared the ba-gee-beez out of you, you might ask "well what can I do how can I protect myself?" I am glade you asked. You need an identity theft protection service that has 24/7 365 day a year monitoring of all three major credit repositories, a service that can deal with all fives forms of identity theft, access to top notch attorneys in the case your arrested because of identity theft and licensed expert investigators to clean up the mess for you until your good name is made whole again no matter how long it takes or how much it costs. Anyone can go to www.ProsperityProtection.com follow the links and fill out one application and immediately start protecting their good name and their significant other from identity theft.

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About the Author:
JW Dickens
http://www.ProsperityProtection.com

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