Re: Medical Privacy and Auto Insurance Industry

[Dynalysis of Princeton <mail@dynalysis.com>]

The site is at http://www.insure.com

The article is called "What your auto insurer knows about you" by Joe Frey.
ChoicePoint offer's insurers a resource that provides applicant names, addresses,
phone numbers, credit reports, claims history, an MV reporting.    They also
provide aliases, criminal recorrds and histories. They are affiliated with
Equifax.  According to this article, when you apply for auto insurance the
insurance company askes ChoicePoint to give them information which includes a
credit score and claims history for underwriting. Credit scores are considered
flawed by the industry and insurance companies realize this. Evidently rates are
based on these scores.  In 1999 it appears that some legislation may be coming up
to focus on this issue. I assume then if insurers are asking medical questions
that they will extend their inquiries to MIB which operates like Equifax.  If you
sign an authorization that says they can check personal history, credit, etc., and
investigate you, it seems they will and do.  It would be interesting to see if the
insurance companies would insure their own underwriters  and employees based on
this practice.  Of course, that would never come up because that would mean that
the employer was invading the privacy of their employees.

METRA1001@aol.com wrote:

> Barbara-
>
> I tried to open this site, and my ISP reported URL denied access to that site.
> What went wrong, and whose site is this? I was hoping to find some data about
> this auto insurance/medical files topic. I tried 3x and got no results from
> URL attempts. Any suggestions?
>
> In a message dated 2/6/99 10:40:39 AM EST, mail@dynalysis.com writes:
>
> << From:        mail@dynalysis.com (Dynalysis of Princeton)
>  Sender:        med-privacy@essential.org
>  Reply-to:      med-privacy@essential.org
>  To:    med-privacy@essential.org (Multiple recipients of list MED-PRIVACY)
>
>  In reference to the auto insurance industry and how information is compiled,
>  specifically about ChoicePoint, ISO and Fair Isaac, go to:
>  http:www.insure.com/features/2999auto.htm
>
>  Regards,
>
>  Barbara
>   >>