WSJ: Economy Spurring Medical Identity Theft

Many problems have been spurred or compounded by the current recession. Among them: medical identity theft, according to The Wall Street Journal. Broadly speaking, the term medical identity theft refers to the use of another’s personal information—be it insurance information, Social Security number or otherwise—to obtain health care in that person’s name or to make false claims for financial gain.

According to WSJ reporter Jilian Mincer, the economic crisis has led to more and more uninsured people using “the coverage of a friend, relative or even a stranger to get care.” And apparently, they’re paying medical workers to obtain information on this coverage.


Medical identity theft can be committed any number of ways. Mincer quotes several cases, including that of a Weston, Fla. medical clinic employee who downloaded more than 1,100 Medicare patients’ personal information and provided the data to a relative who rang up $2.8 million in false Medicare claims. A separate anecdote involves a Pennsylvania man who discovered that someone racked up more than $100,000 worth of medical treatments at five different hospitals in his name.

For victims, the crime carries more than just financial implications, however.  Medical identity theft can also pose a very serious risk to one’s life.  If an impostor’s information makes its way onto someone else’s medical records – for example, their blood type – the results could be life-threatening (for either party).


World Privacy Foundation Executive Director Pam Dixon tells the paper that states with a lot of retirees, like California, Texas, New York, Arizona and Florida, are seeing the most dramatic increases in the criminal trend.

A go-to source for medical identity theft information, the non-profit WPF plans to release a report on the topic in 2010, according to the Journal. In its first report on the subject, released in Spring 2006, the organization estimated that as many as 500,000 Americans may have fallen victim to the crime. It should be interesting to see how far the WPF’s analysis shows we’ve come, or fallen behind, four years later.