evanmorris.com

Next up: outlaw cash.

Prescription Data Used To Assess Consumers

Health and life insurance companies have access to a powerful new tool for evaluating whether to cover individual consumers: a health “credit report” drawn from databases containing prescription drug records on more than 200 million Americans.

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Traditionally, insurance companies have judged an applicant’s risk by gathering medical records from physicians’ offices. But the new tools offer the advantage of being “electronic, fast and cheap,” said Mark Franzen, managing director of Milliman IntelliScript, which provides consumers’ personal drug profiles to insurers.

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The companies receive data only on individuals who are in clients in PBMs’ databases, generally excluding, say, people who pay for drugs in cash.

But seriously, we’re talking about the profits of the most profitable sector of the US economy. Is it so hard to foresee a time when paying cash for prescriptions is considered insurance fraud?

Last updated on Monday, August 4, 2008