US Hospitals will now mine your credit card data and use algorithms that may result in a call from your doctor if you've let your gym membership lapse, made a habit of ordering out for fast food or begin shopping at plus-sized stores. Because some hospitals are starting to use detailed consumer data to create profiles on current and potential patients to identify those most likely to get sick, so the hospitals can intervene before they do.
Acxiom Corp. (ACXM) and LexisNexis are two of the largest data brokers who collect such information on individuals. They say their data are supposed to be used only for marketing, not for medical purposes or to be included in medical records. Both sell to health insurers, but say it's to help those companies offer better services to members. Credit card usage may now affect health care premiums.
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ScienceDaily reports that:
Healthy living kidney donors often face pointless post-donation hurdles when seeking or changing health or life insurance, according to results of a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers.
"Living donors are some of the healthiest people in the United States. They're heavily screened before they're approved for donation and should be easily insurable," says study leader Dorry Segev, M.D., Ph.D., M.H.S., an associate professor of surgery and epidemiology at The Johns Hopkins University.
Further:
Little evidence suggests any extra health risks or a shortened life span after live kidney donation, says Segev, an abdominal transplant surgeon, but he and his colleagues had heard stories from their patients about insurance troubles after donation. Seeking hard data about such anecdotal tales, the researchers surveyed 1,046 people who donated a kidney at The Johns Hopkins Hospital between 1970 and 2011. They asked them whether they had initiated or changed health or life insurance in the years after their donation and whether they had any problems with the process. They also explored possible reasons for their problems.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:10PM
Lots of problems with this.
(1) Watch out for errors.. It sucks hard when you can't get hired because that background check has comingled records from a felon with the same name from the same city. But once this info starts getting into your health records, who knows what chain of events it might set off that could culminate in harmful medical decisions. Accuracy is not a priority for these guys, it is your health on the line, not theirs.
(2) How much data are the hospitals going to feed back to Axciom, et al? These guys are data vacuums, I fully expect that they are going suck as hard as possible to pry anything loose from your medical providers. And even with rules like HIIPA and restrictions on PII (industry term for personally-identifiable-information) the medical people are novices at this stuff while the data brokers are sharks. Combine non-PII info with stuff the data brokers already have and maybe it starts to become PII...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:28PM
This is why it should be written into law that people are allowed to see and get copies of all data about them (with certain obvious exceptions for law enforcement with regard to significant criminals) which has been aggregated and stored by any entity. Additionally, it should also be written into law that those entities which store/use/sell consumer data reveal how they categorize the person based on their data. A person should also be able to easily appeal the retention of any datum they can prove is misleading or untrue. Companies found to violate the policies should be fined so heavily that just the threat would be a significant deterrence.
One of the many problems with the Stalker Economy is that its overlords could use techniques which can spin anybody negatively no matter which data is collected, all for the sake of collusion and profit. It's why we need to be able to have full transparency to prevent abuse.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @12:59AM
Much as I hate the MAFIAA's tactics on controlling their "stuff", maybe we could learn some lessons from them about how to legally place sanctions on others via law.
Let's do as Gates did... "Embrace and Extend".
We now have a legal framework for copyright law. Extend that to privacy law. If a copyright holder tells YouTube to take it down, and YouTube refueses, a lawsuit of what is it? $180,000 or something like that, per instance? The law seems to think moms on welfare can afford this if their kid violates the law - should Corporations be held to the same ethic? The first three words of a well known pledge are " I pledge allegiance" and the last three words are "justice for all". If the last three words are meaningless, then what good is the pledge in the first place?
The middle class does not seem to have realized that all this data mining is so that dynamic pricing can be implemented. We used to call it "gouging", if a little guy offered a rich man some gasoline during the gas crisis, but wanted $25 for the gallon of it. However we seem to take it in stride if a hospital charges a patient $10 for an aspirin tablet.
I know where this is going... the instant someone walks in a business, Lexus-Nexxus will tell the business how much that person is worth, and they can use that in their pricing algorithm for that person. It already happens. I have seen people go the hospital and completely covered with "indigent care", whereas someone who had saved up to buy a home loses his home to hospital debt - as the collection department know they have lienable assets.
What good is it to try to build anything if others just take it?
Its like saving up to buy a nice car, drive it to a bad area of town, drop into a cafe for a cup of coffee, only to discover men beginning to strip your car right in front of you. Same thing, only its not tires and car parts the thugs are after, rather its your wealth as accounts, and the thugs do not use wrenches to destroy your car and their knives to keep you at bay... its all done with politicians, lawyers, and pens. They have law written for thm that says its OK for them to do something, but illegal for you to do it. That's why our law is so wordy and damned near incomprehensible. They even have the chutzpah to call it "rule of Law" and "free enterprise". Don't get me wrong... I am a firm believer in rule of law, however the law has to apply to ALL.
Politicians need to be asked these questions while they are behind the microphone and before the election. Also ask them about their stance of breach of contract - again when they are behind the microphone. Politicians who refuse to allow frank public discussions of this kind of matter should be highly suspect of being bought and paid for whores.
I am going to post AC, because I want to come back and mod the hell out of this discussion should I get any modpoints.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by JNCF on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:12PM
I really don't like getting tracked in this manner, so I use cash for everything but the occasional online purchase. I use a debit card for those, but I've been intending to cancel it as soon as more sites start accepting crypto. This article has me rethinking this position. Maybe I should use my debit card more frequently, but only for particularly healthy purchases...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:20PM
Or the contrary... show them a high percentage of your (traceable) expenses going into medication - maybe they'll offer you a discount.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by JNCF on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:44PM
I was thinking about the health insurance companies, not the hospitals. I take great pains to stay away from hospitals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:12PM
Don't put those donuts for the office on your credit card or beer for a party. They'll assume your a fat drunk. Gramps wants you to pick him up a pack of Pall-Malls? You better pay cash.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @01:19AM
One thing we need to be ever-vigilant to is our ability to pay with cash.
When influential people are behind the microphone, literally anything can happen.
Even two thousand years ago, we were warned of a one-world government, and the "mark of the beast" which was to be implanted in our right hand or in our forehead. Without it we cannot buy or sell. Sound like the RFID chip? Also does it sound easily enforceable by tagging it onto Obamacare? What do we do when the Microphone People start telling us this is required? Anyone gonna stand up to them? Their pens are backed by guns, and obedient people who can and will fire on their own countrymen!
Don't believe it? Read Stanley Milgram's "Obedience to Authority". Many people lose all sense of morality when placed in the "agentic" state where someone else is supposedly assuming responsibility. Its how our leaders get people to kill other people for them. Read up on some of Napoleon's leadership techniques to see just how dumb most of us sheeple are.
If we do not learn from history, we have to take the course over. History has not been kind to most of us over the centuries. Things have gotten a lot better, and I for one am going to be clawing and fighting not to go back. We have a lot of really good companies in the world, doing a lot of marvelous things. We also have a bunch of parasitic companies, existing only because they have learned to game the system by buying laws and selective enforcement. I believe in excising those companies just as much as I believe in excising a cancerous tumor before it kills its host.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:28PM
Since immemorial time it is known that blood-letting/the use of leeches and patient data mining have high therapeutic value.
Nowadays though, the blood-letting subject has mostly changed from the patient to her/his card - but it has beens shown times and again this switch doesn't affect too much the outcome of the treatment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday June 26 2014, @11:53PM
When I eat a Taco Bell and buy cigarettes and booze. All the hospitals get are my CC bills for lots of fruit and veggies (which I'm usually buying for someone else), bicycle stuff, and every other gasoline purchase for my car.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday June 27 2014, @01:05AM
At least we don't have to worry about pre-existing conditions preventing people from getting medical insurance to treat these problems. Not sure how well that trade-off works.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @06:18AM
This isn't about pre-existing conditions, it's about profiling people who are already under the care of a doctor to see if they need reminders to make healthier choices. There are all kinds of problems with that, no need to show us your hateon for obamacare too.
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Friday June 27 2014, @11:26AM
My health insurance company, Blue Cross, experimented with a program about four years ago for clients like me with chronic conditions. I opted in to this program because they sold it to me as "education and resources" and I thought it couldn't hurt. It actually turned out to be systematic harassment. A nurse would call me at home a month to grill me about what I am doing to take care of myself and thereby save the insurance company money. This was incredibly offensive to me personally, as well as a major insult to my doctor, who presumably knows what the hell he is doing and doesn't need the insurance company second-guessing him six times between my semi-annual appointments. I was always polite to the poor nurse who got roped into making that phone call, but I was about as passive-aggressive as anyone can be in giving neutral and unhelpful answers. My attempts to quit the program were met with circular phone trees and dropped phone calls.
After about six months, I got a letter saying the program was cancelled due to lack of participation. Apparently other clients were more successful than I was at getting the hell out of that program.
I predict the response to Carolinas HealthCare's new program will be even more negative. So this won't work for the advertised purpose.
What I really think is that harassing clients is so offensive, the actual goal is to drive sick people away from the Carolinas hospitals. Make them hate the hospital so they won't go until they collapse. It will save money for the first few quarters, which is what matters to executive bonuses.
Either that, or the data are going to set the group rates for what the insurance company charges employers and the exchange pool.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @11:47AM
My problem with this sort of thing, beyond the obvious, is that these databases are filled with complete garbage junk data. They're so wrong it isn't even funny. They not only can't track individuals at this level of granularity and can't aggregate data from multiple sources accurately, they don't even try because they have no financial incentive to try. Their data is all but worthless because it's so inaccurate.
At some point, people need to revolt against these massive, private databases. The only way you know they have wrong data about you is when something bad happens that brings it to your attention. You have no ability to know about or correct bad data.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Friday June 27 2014, @11:50AM
Although, it was pizza delivery [aclu.org] and not the hospital.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.