Need Health Insurance? Your Favorite Pharmacy May Be Standing In Your Way

I've told you before about the Medical Information Bureau and how it may come between you and health insurance.

The MIB is like a credit reporting agency. It collects information from your current health insurer, or from any health-related insurance company you may even make an application to (such as long-term care insurance or disability insurance).

Then, when you apply for another type of health-related insurance, that company contacts the MIB to see what kind of file it has on you. If anything turns up that looks like it might cost them more than you will pay them for premiums, you get rejected.

Now it turns out insurers have yet another information source available to them. According to Business Week, health insurers are tapping into pharmacy databases to see what kinds of drugs you purchase. Have a problem with blood pressure? Taking expensive statins? How about an antidepressant? Forget health insurance.

Don't blame the insurers. [cynical half smile here] You have to remember that many of them have investors they are beholden to. Their entire raison d'etre is not to help people pay for their healthcare. No, their reason for existence is to make money which makes their investors happy. Even the "non-profit" insurers have huge salaries to supplement.

Don't blame the pharmacies either. [cynical half smile, #2] They, too, are in the business of making money. Your friendly local pharmacist is a business-person first. And if you happen to benefit, too -- well, OK. But pharmacies exist for their profits, like any business does.

Wise patients will make themselves familiar with how their privacy is being violated by the use of pharmacy databases. You may even want to ask your local pharmacist what he knows about your information being sold to these insurers.

If they are going to play these games, we patients are wise to develop ways to get around them.

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