Rick Kam, President and CEO, ID Experts and Christine Arevalo, director of healthcare identity management, ID Experts write:
Healthcare fraud is costing American taxpayers up to $234 billion annually, based on estimates from the FBI. It’s no wonder that a stolen medical identity has a $50 street value, according to the World Privacy Forum – whereas a stolen social security number, on the other hand, only sells for $1.
One form of healthcare fraud, known as medical identity theft, has its own staggering statistics: 1.42 million Americans were victims of medical identity theft in 2010, according to a 2011 study on patient data privacy and security by the Ponemon Institute. The report estimates the annual economic impact of medical identity theft to be $30.9 billion.
Read more on Government HealthIT. The authors have chosen some real-life examples to include that remind everyone how much harm medical ID theft can cause.