Health Insurance Insider

Estimates from a study conducted by the Boston University have estimates that run into 200,000 incidents of identity theft for use in medical purposes. This translates into an annual loss of $53 Billion dollars in lost revenue for the health industry which is why even the president and presidentiables have taken up the battle cry to implement much needed reform on the Health care Industry which analysts have been saying is going downhill for quite sometime now. This drive is to make health care more accessible thus in effect dissuades people from turning to the said crime. The rising cost of medical health care is to blame and the government has now just begun to pay notice to the said problem which hopefully would be resolved once elections seats a new president of gives the current one another term.

If you look at statistics, cases of identity theft for medical purposes are still quite rare but are steadily rising. An article on the internet that had an addict steal a drivers license of another person and using the same to get into a hospital and deliver a baby she later abandoned has caught the attention of health industry leaders. The true owner of the Identification card when she was contacted by the hospital and police due to the abandoned baby was surprised of course and had to go through a horrendous ordeal to prove to the authorities that she was the rightful owner of the said ID and not the user. She then had to contend with the fact that the medical history of the Meth addict has now been incorporated into hers and clearing up the mess took a lot of resources in terms of attorney�s fees and other such costs. So be aware of your ID�s and as a matter of fact any document piece of paper that has your address and other personal numbers like your social security and tax account numbers for they can open the doors to a nightmare you wouldn�t want to be caught in as the poor woman had.

New legislation passed congress last 2006 and is currently under implementation for the state of Colorado. Changes affect the current HSAs including; full HAS deductions, no deductions on partial year coverage, rollover of IRA assets into HAS funds, Rollover from FSA to HAS funds and that it is now permissible to make extra HAS contributions to some employees. These changes are currently ongoing and verification of such should be done as soon as possible if these areas do affect you or your family members. Also watch out for the presidential candidate debates from which we would be getting some information regarding their ( the many candidate�s ) stands on how they plan to improve health care for ordinary Americans.