MilhouseVH - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Easy (Score 1) 1197

by MilhouseVH on Monday February 22, 2010 @04:34PM (#31235122) Attached to: Health Insurance When Leaving the Corporate World?

Before you apply for insurance, check your "medical report" file from the major insurance specialty credit reporting agencies. Consumer medical report files, sold to insurers by the Medical Information Bureau, Inc. (MIB), Ingenix, Inc., and Milliman, Inc. enable health and life insurance corporations to charge higher premiums and power the technology behind rescission of coverage. (http://www.annualmedicalreport.com/08/15/nobody-knows-the-medical-information-bureau-mib/) Alarmingly, your medical report files may include both medical and non-medical information about you. For instance, personal data collected by the Medical Information Bureau (MIB) may include medical conditions, credit report history, driving records, criminal activity, drug use, sexual orientation, avocation, participation in hazardous sports, and personal or family genetic history.

Health Insurance When Leaving the Corporate World? 1197

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday February 22, 2010 @12:44PM from the hey-that-could-be-useful dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I've been working at a large company since I got out of college, so I didn't have to give much thought to getting my own healthcare plan. Now I'm thinking about leaving the corporate world and starting out on my own. I have a family now, so I need to make sure we're going to be covered should anything happen. Researching online turns up horror stories of people trying to get individual healthcare plans, or getting denied coverage on plans they thought they had. Does anyone else have experience going through this and what you've had to deal with, or am I making too big a deal of it?"

Poorer Children More Likely To Get Antipsychotics 334

Posted by kdawson on Sunday December 13, 2009 @06:43PM from the artifact-of-the-system dept.

krou writes "A new study by a team from Rutgers and Columbia has discovered that poorer children are more likely to be given powerful antipsychotic drugs. According to the NY Times (login required), 'children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts.' It raises the question: 'Do too many children from poor families receive powerful psychiatric drugs not because they actually need them — but because it is deemed the most efficient and cost-effective way to control problems that may be handled much differently for middle-class children?' Two possible explanations are offered: 'insurance reimbursements, as Medicaid often pays much less for counseling and therapy than private insurers do,' and because of 'the challenges that families in poverty may have in consistently attending counseling or therapy sessions, even when such help is available.' The study is due to be published next year in the journal Health Affairs." The full article is available behind a paywall from the first link. The lead author of the study said he "did not have clear evidence to form an opinion on whether or not children on Medicaid were being overtreated."

Facebook Photos Lead To Cancellation of Quebec Woman's Insurance 645

Posted by timothy on Sunday November 22, 2009 @08:51AM from the public-option dept.

No. 24601 writes "A Quebec woman on long-term sick leave, due to a diagnosis of depression, lost her health benefits after her insurance provider found photos of her on Facebook smiling and looking cheerful at parties and out on the beach. Besides all the obvious questions, how did the insurance company access her locked Facebook profile?"

Slashdot Top Deals