Your Health Credit Report

We are all aware that we each have a financial credit report. Did you know more than 200 million Americans also have a Health "credit report"?

Your health credit report draws from databases containing your prescription drug records. What's the big deal here? Well, more and more heath insurance and life insurance companies are paying these database companies, Milliman IntelliScript and Ingenix are the two largest, for your prescription information. Armed with this information, insurance companies then make decisions about offering you coverage.

How can this be you ask? When you sign a consent form while appling for insurance, you are giving insurance companies the permission to search your medical history. If you want the insurance, there's no way around this.

When your precription information is gathered by the database, it provides insurers a "phamacy risk score". A higher score implies higher risk.

How popular is this database becoming? IntelliScript got about 1 million quereis from insurers last year. So much for HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)