As a medical professional in the midwest I have had my personal information stolen 3 times in the last 12 months. In order to sign up with insurance companies, medicare, medicaid and etc., I have to provide name, office address, home address, SSN, personal and professional history and in some cases even a photo.
They provide a really, really nice privacy policy that says they won't share any of this information, but they accept no responsibility for its loss.
Today, I have three really great credit monitoring services (for one year mind you) and that is the extent of the liability I can extract from an insurance company, or even the federal government, for the loss of my information.
It seems really retarded to me, but who am I to complain? (hears jack-boots in hallway---)