WHAT?!?!?!?!

I guess you can't properly appreciate the title without hearing the way my mother says it with a mix of shock, anger, irritation and outright rage and with a certain shrillness to her voice. Now reconsider.

Medical Data on Empire Blue Cross Members May Be Lost

That's the headline from today's NYT that's linked above.

I know. WHAT?!?!?

It seems their general practice for sending medical data on members to their mental health/substance abuse subcontractor is to download the data onto a storage device, like a cd, remove all encryption and password protection, and ship it via UPS.

If any federally funded research or public health project were to suggest such a practice, even with multiple identifiers removed, they would have their funding yanked so fast it would make your head spin off of your spine.

THIS is standard practice in the private sector??? Are you FREAKIN' kidding me? When they made all of their members read HIPAA and sign off on it, did they happen to read it themselves?? Apparently not.

Yes, the insurance industry has definitely become the dark side.

My love for them knows no boundaries....