Recently, I purchased a new term life insurance policy.  I sat with my insurance guy for about 35 minutes.  For five of those minutes give me several different quotes.  And I spent the other 30 minutes filling out paper work, signing here, and initialing there.  Seriously, I must have signed or initialed over a hundred times.

I know I am one of those who stress the importance of reading the fine print, but when you are actually in the situation… that can be hard to do.  This is usually how it goes…

The insurance guy says… this paper gives us permission to do yada, yada, yada… sign here… we sign. This paper says I’ve advised you of blah, blah, blah… initial there… we initial.  Most times we just take with they say, without reading it for ourselves, and sign next to the X. 

My insurance guy quickly brushed over the forms… explaining page after page of single spaced, 6 point font disclosures in only one or two sentences.  As I recall it… one of those forms I signed gave the insurance company to permission to check out my medical history.  Because I just signed where he pointed, I don’t know how they planned to get my medical history.  It is very likely I signed a form authorizing them access to my “health credit report”.

Yes, health credit report… did ya’ll even know that those existed?  I didn’t.  I learned about it today when I read the Washington Post.  Apparently this is a new resource available to health and life insurance companies. 

There are two health information companies, Ingenix and Millian, which collects the prescription records of 200 million of us.  With our permission (signature on one of those forms we don’t read), health and life insurance companies can have access to our prescription history.  And they can use the information in those files to deny coverage. 

Didn’t they have access to this anyway?

No, not really.  Before the advent of these prescription databases, they would get information from the doctors you listed in your application.  But want if you forgot to mention that in addition to your primary care doctor… you also see a neurologist once or twice a year to get a script for a medicine that manages your minor nervous disorder.  Well, unless your primary care doctor has notes about this in his records, the insurance company may never know.

Yes, the insurance companies may collect samples of your blood and urine samples… but they can’t check it for everything.  They mainly test for the biggies… HIV, cancer, diabetes… your blood, urine and the records from your primary doctor may never give hint to your nervous disorder.

Well… now that they have access to your prescription records… that fact that you have been taking Tegretol everyday for the past three years is a huge flashing red light.  Tegretol has been used to treat all kinds of ailments ranging from damage caused by carpal tunnel to schizophrenia. 

Because of many medications have variety of uses, the insurance company can assume that you have all kinds of health problems… which may or may not be true.  And based on those assumptions they may charge a higher premium or even limit or deny coverage.

Another issue with this health report… what if something in it is untrue? The FTC says that these reports are to be treating like any other report that falls under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.  If you are denied coverage based on the report, the insurance company will have to let you know that this is why you were denied.  And Ingenix or Millian is required to give you a copy of the report.

But even though the FTC issued this order, these health information companies are scarcely regulated.  There is some legislation floating around in Congress that’ll give the feds more control in regulating these companies.  But as of now, the control is very limited.

And regulation about the uses of prescription history is important.  Sparse control leaves the door open for all kinds of people getting their hands on your personal information.  The information could be sold to marketing companies, purchased by potential employers to deny you a job or it just may happen to fall into the hands of your political rival. Ummm… (Could you image if the McCain camp got a hold of Obama’s prescription history?  That would make for an interesting smear ad.)

And about this Inegenix… do we really want them to be the gatekeeper of our prescription history?  For one, they are owned by United Health Care, which is a top health insurer.  It is kind of hard to provide an independent view when your parent company is an insurance company.

And secondly, their questionable practices have been the center of much unrest.  The company was sued by the state of New York for alleged inaccuracy.  And now, there are some folks in Connecticut that hope to bring a class act suit against the company for similar reasons. 

But aside from all that, I do not like this idea of a health credit report.  It just gives insurance companies more ammunition to deny us.  It’s like having insider information.  When Martha Stewart did that, she got hauled off to the pen.  But when insurance companies do it… it’s ok?

I know I was a bit harsh on Obama’s quasi universal health insurance plan.  But now that the insurance companies have this little trick in their bag… Obama’s health care plan is looking a lot more attractive.