VirusHead

I am complete agreement with Jolly Roger’s post Uninsured? Insured, But Poor? DIE, Deadbeat at Reconstitution 2.0, in which he speculates about the ultimate purpose of MedFICO. MedFICO is a new Healthcare Analytics product that assesses healthcare payment risk.

Already, payment history is being gathered from hospitals around the country in order to develop records that will predict “how likely patients will be to pay future medical bills.”

Don’t tell me that this isn’t some kind of a screening process to allow for the disposal of the inconveniently ill among us. Once they die off, why those health insurance CEOs can enjoy pay and bonuses that will make rock stars look like paupers in comparison. Isn’t it way past time to force these heartless, greedy, useless motherf**kers OUT OF an arena that absolutely should NOT be run like a business?

See: The Doctor Will See Your Credit Now:

“If you had a poor score, you could be denied a hospital stay, for example,” she said.

Linda Foley, who runs the Identity Theft Resource Center, also said any kind of medical risk scoring would run into a thicket of federal laws designed to protect consumers. It’s not clear if such a score would be covered by the Fair Credit Reporting Act and other credit-related laws that grant consumers the right to see their own credit reports and scores. The information may also be covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which restricts the use of patients’ private information.

The problem we see is: Who is regulating this?” she said. “How do we know it will never be used before treatment?”

Short answer: We don’t, and it will.