What, Medical Identity Theft?

A little over three years ago I was speaking with a good friend and author on identity theft. He had predicted that medical identity theft would soon be the new frontier of identity theft. He had been soundly rejected by the press and some so called experts. They put down his theory as soundly as if he had purported that the world was flat after all. In fact John Gardner was exactly right. Read the article below to see just how pervasive medical identity theft and fraud has become.

A new survey from the Ponemon Institute shows that nearly six percent of American adults have been victims of medical identity theft, with an average cost per victim of $20,160. The cost comes from the efforts victims face to sort out what happened with concerned parties such as doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and credit agencies, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. "The National Study on Medical Identity Theft" is based on findings from 156,000 people who agreed to discuss the general topic of identity theft, with 5.8 percent confirming they had been the targets of medical ID theft. Based on those statistics, the study estimates that 1.42 million adults in the U.S. may have experienced the theft of their medical identification information.