LOL lisa, exactly!!!!! Nodding love, that's exactly how I found out, insurance papers -- same papers different company. My eyes were bugging out of my head then I did a google search and found the same thing. If you do a google without the quotes, just equifax medical services, there's 10 plus pages. Foremost which is this one: http://www.lynxpurchasing.com/Pages/EquiiFax.htm That's the website itself, says: Equifax Healthcare Solutions, a division of Equifax, offers quick, accurate, on-line solutions to assist providers in managing your accounts receivables from the point-of-care through account resolution. Drawing on Equifaxâ??s vast consumer credit database of over 200 million consumer files, we provide the tools to verify correct patient demographics, detect fraud, assess risk associated with self pay accounts, increase recoveries, reduce delayed claims, manage return mail and improve internal collection processesâ?¦ adding to your bottom line. IMPROVED PATIENT CARE THROUGH BETTER FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT Your membership with NeoMD offers you the opportunity to directly access Equifax, enabling you to realize the following benefits: Report pricing discounted at 35%* Easy report access to Equifaxâ??s internet delivery via NeoMDâ??s website hyperlink or www.eport.equifax.com. The Equifax suite of services include: ACROFILEâ?¢ Delivers comprehensive credit information by searching a national, online database of 200 million consumer credit files. The straight-forward reporting format provides complete credit-granting decision support that's easy to use. Continually updated information provides the tools needed to make fast, informed collection decisions. SAFESCAN® A national, online fraud warning database that compares the customer inquiry information to data contained in the database and alerts customers when a potentially fraudulent element is found relating to the subjects name, address or Social Security number. PAYMENT PREDICTOR SCORE Built by Equifax Decision Solutions, this model is tailored to meet the specific needs of the healthcare industry and predicts the likelihood of a medical account becoming a serious credit risk. DTEC® A verification and location service that uses a consumer's Social Security number to search the Equifax national database to deliver identification information. It is useful in locating individuals who may have utilized another name, or when more than one identity has been created with the same Social Security number. FINDERS SM Specifically designed for collection purposes, FINDERS is a combination of the most valuable skip locating components of the credit report. It saves time by providing key locate information, reduces costs associated with skip-tracing, and provides a bankruptcy alert when applicable. TO BEGIN RECEIVING EQUIFAX SERVICES To receive a Welcome Package containing Agreements for Service contact Jody Sanders via e-mail at jody.sanders@equifax.com or fax (504) 219-0184. Please identify your organization as a NeoMD member and provide the following: contact name, e-mail address, corporate name, telephone number and mailing address. Mailing instructions for returning signed agreements will be provided in the Welcome Package. Upon receipt of signed agreements and Equifax approval, you will be provided a customer number to use in registering for ePORT. It is important that you use your assigned customer number to receive the pricing NeoMD has negotiated on behalf of their members. Should you have product or pricing questions, contact: Sherrie Adams, Healthcare Specialist at (801) 278-6934 or via e-mail at sherrie.adams@equifax.com. SUPPORT Equifax Customer Service and Sales Support is staffed with Customer Service Specialists who assist customers with general product and service questions, billing questions and technical issues related to PC access. If your call is regarding ePORT registration and technical questions, Customer Service will automatically route the call to the ePORT Support Desk. Customer Service and Sales Support hours are from 8:00 AM EST to 8:00 PM EST Monday through Friday. The toll free number is (800) 685-5000. Have your client number? You are now ready to register on ePORT. Just click on the hyperlink for quick access www.eport.equifax.com. * The 35% discount does not apply in certain restricted areas. ------------------------------------------------------------ Equifax enables and secures global commerce through its information management, consumer credit, marketing services, business information, authentication and e-commerce businesses. As the leader in information services, Equifax adds value wherever customers do business, including the financial services, retail, healthcare, telecommunications/utilities, information technology, brokerage, insurance and business lending industries and government. Equifax also enlightens, enables and empowers consumers to manage and protect their financial health with services offered at www.equifax.com. The company ranked in the top five in return on equity among Business Weekâ??s Best Performers for 2001. Equifax employs 6,600 in 13 countries and has $1.1 billion in revenue. Equifax, SAFESCAN and DTEC are registered trademarks of Equifax Inc. ACROFILE is a trademark of Equifax Inc. FINDERS is a service mark of Equifax Inc. Copyright © 2001, Equifax Inc., Atlanta, Georgia. All rights reserved. There's another, they're in kahoots/partnership with AT&T, cigna, and new england medical center. Then I found this old link, gives an equifax history: http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7563&pgnum= What got me all buggy-eyed was this on page 5 of those same insurance papers you found: "I (we) authorize ...to obtain and use any medical or non-medical information on or relating to me (us) that may affect my (our) insurability. This is true for its reinsurers also. This includes information about drugs, alcohol and mental illness, financial information, driving record, criminal record, avocations and aviation activity. This information may be used to evaluate an application for life insurance. It may also be sued to evaluate a claim for benefits...blah blah blah communicable diseases and other risk factors... This is the good part: This information can be released by my (our) doctors, medical practitioners and pharmacists. It can also be released by medical and related facilities. This includes hospitals, clinics, and facilities run by the Veteran's Administration, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and the Mayo Clinic. Information can also be released by the sources listed below: 1., insurers 2., reinsurers; 3., medical information bureau (MIB); 4., employers; and 5., commercial credit reporting agencies (CRA). All of the sources mentioned above can give this information to a CRA (such as Equifax Medical Services) action for ... life insurance company. This is not the for MIB. then it goes on detailing the affiliates and reinsurers of the life insurance company that it can pass the information on to including, gotta love this, "persons doing services for it." Amazing, abosolutely amazing, I'm still shaking my head, pushing my eyes back in and definately NOT applying for life insurance. Interesting, I think this authorization and disclosure is just what Butch and I were talking about on another thread for the HIPAA, whether medical information was private. If so, we'll all be seeing this attached to everything, not just for life insurance. AND, if you don't sign it, you don't get serviced -- for everything remotely related to health care, there's the really scary part. Sassy
I understand your reaction to this particular disclosure, but keep in mine that there are different applications in different states, and your state's information procedures have to be followed on your application. I agree with your reaction, and I would never sign that document. Most company's (and state's) information practices are not this sweeping, and are only limited to certain purposes, and usually for a limited duration of time, so don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. But definitely read what you're supposed to sign. They get away with stuff like this because folks just sign it without giving it a thought. I just pulled out one of my life applications, and it absolutely does not read like this one you've referenced. If that app is for the state of Kansas, then all you Kansas folks should go complain to your state's insurance department. The one I have in my hand says:
Amazing, abosolutely amazing, I'm still shaking my head, pushing my eyes back in and definately NOT applying for life insurance. Sassy ==================== The way around this is to become self insured. Of course that won't happen as long as you keep dealing with bankers and insurers.
gANG, Come to think of it this might be a good thing. Now Eq will be subject to the FDCPA. With all the mistakes they make think of all that money we'll make. LOLOL WE'RE RICH!
Butch, they own one of the medical services that does the home exams for L&H insurance. Portamedic, I think. And, who knows what else.....
Thanks Breeze!!!!!!!! I'm not throwing the baby out just yet, well I did have my tubes tied ;-). I'm in Arizona, this package came from MA, it does specifically list Arizona on the bottom of the form as a reference and is the same package of forms, just with a different life insurance company's name, that Love posted the pdf link for above. I am still wondering if the the form itself, dated 2001, is designed to comply with the HIPAA compliance requirements, it reads like it does and is, you know? The wording you quoted from your present applications, is that designed to meet those compliance requirements? This article, written in 1995 about equifax is really enlightening or it was for me anyway, because they are straight away on target in becoming the information gods of the world: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.09/equifax_pr.html It's not so shocking to me that information gathering, monitoring, the database and marketting, is such big business, I sure didn't have that foresight, I think it is really dangerous though to have only ONE company taking such a lead and becoming a monopoly. I was thinking yesterday, what a great gift technology is and what perks there could be for having us all categorized by number and listed in a central database. I just don't trust the HUMANS utilizing the technology, their motive is greed and securing a market. It's like cloning, how wonderful that could be for all sorts of humanly ailments, not touching the creation of life, but while we've advanced ourselves in the technology, our ethics and use of the technology hasn't kept pace, that makes it dangerous indeed. If it's just being used for making a buck and not the greater good, we'd be better off without the technology at all. Ok, enough of my soapbox -- sorry, there's an tangent waiting to happen. I guess the trick for us, is knowing that these things exist and how we fit into the system and technology, without giving up what we need to protect our families and pursue living. The sure thing is it's not going away and you can't take back a lifetime of being tracked, labelled, categorized and data-based -- short of a divinely inspired and invoked mega-lightening bolt. Sassy
Look for a different company, hon. I got mine from GE Capital - they're rated A++ and have one of the cheapest term products on the market. You can apply online, an agent calls with follow up questions, and then they send (yes!!) Portamedic to do the physical. I didn't find their forms limitless and sweeping. Maybe they've changed, I dunno, but at least you'll get some good insurance. I don't work for them. Also, anything they would report would already be on MIB, so no biggie. You're right it's knowing how things affect you, and sometimes you don't know until it's all over but the shouting. They predict that soon we'll all have a chip implanted with everything about us embedded, and we just swipe, hehe. Someone will find a way to hack it. I might become an expatriate if they do that.
thanks Breeze!!!!!!!! I was reading of the first chip implanted family :-( trying it out for all of us -- mark of the beast I say, but my back pew self is showing now. You know those magnetic strips are always going bad, it would really suck to have your implanted swiper not be readable, lol. Sassy
NO WAY!!!!!!!!!!!! Conrad is one of the 2,000-plus customers of a Thriftway grocery store in West Seattle who signed up in a pilot program run by Oakland, California-based Indivos Corp. that links customers' fingerprints with their credit or debit cards, allowing them to buy groceries by simply running a finger over a scanner. Check this out from CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/06/03/fingerprint.privacy.ap/index.html Concerns beyond the usual of privacy, big brother, security etc., are: "...currently, there are no federal laws regarding the selling of fingerprint databases and information." AND "...Indivos chief executive Phil Gioia said his company signed a contract with Thriftway not to sell that information to marketing companies. But Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, says the technology raises such novel and sticky legal issues as who owns the actual fingerprint. Even Gioia recognizes that much remains uncharted. For example, if Indivos were to some day be acquired by a credit-card issuing bank that institution would gain ownership of the fingerprint database. Gioia's response: "that's in the future ... we haven't nailed that down." Sassy
