What Is Medical Identity Theft?

A recent study showed that the number of cases involved with medical identity theft have gone up more than 21% in the year prior to the release of the report. While identity theft in general has been on the rise for some time, these specific figures and their relation to the medical industry could be seen as shocking. What is medical identity fraud, and how does it differ from traditional identity theft? We’re going to take a look, along with how you can protect yourself.

What is medical identity theft?

The specifics of medical identity theft vary from case to case, but they obviously pertain in some way to your medical care, insurance or provisions. Examples of this specific type of fraud can include someone using your insurance for specialist care or to see a doctor, using your identity to obtain subscriptions for drugs they are not entitled, attempting to buy expensive medical equipment in your name or even make a false claim for compensation.

Medical identity theft is not just a financial problem, either. While someone using your identity for expensive goods could end up costly, it could also confuse your medical history. If someone visits a doctor pretending to be you, new information could be added to your medical history that obviously has nothing to do with you – this could be a problem when you really do visit the doctor as your files won’t be accurate and could lead to a misdiagnosis or mistake in care.

Medical identity theft is also unique because unlike some other types of similar fraud, you don’t need someone’s social security number to commit it. Because of the nature of some medical care, hospitals who are in a rush to provide treatment might not spot the fraud until much later.

How can you protect against it?

Everyone is entitled to a copy of their own medical billing records under HIPAA rules. It’s important to keep a copy and make sure you’re aware of how much you’re spending on average. Many people simply ignore such bulling data and are therefore unaware if there are any changes. This can be the first way to spot if you’re being overcharged or even defrauded.

Check your EOB (Explanation of Benefits) statement regularly to see if there have been any changes or if any provisions of care you haven’t received are listed. Be aware of your medical records and make sure you know if something is listed that has nothing to do with you.

Some medical providers might resist giving you your files, but you have a right to access them. More tips for preventing medical fraud can be found here.

As with all types of identity theft, there are some other simple measures you can take. Things like protecting passwords might not be as relevant here – but it’s still something you should be aware of. Some consumers choose to rely on identity theft protection services for an extra level of protection. Make sure you check all your mail regularly so you can spot any irregularities. You should also consider shredding your mail and other important documents as some fraudsters still rely on rummaging through trash.

While medical fraud is on the rise, if you know what you’re looking for – you should be more protected than most.

References:

http://medidfraud.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/2014_Medical_ID_Theft_Study1.pdf
https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-individuals/guidance-materials-for-consumers/index.html
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0171-medical-identity-theft
http://noidentitytheft.com/

About the author

Peter Ellington has years of experience in the web security and fraud industry. He knows how important protecting your identity can be – that’s why he recommends identity theft protection.

What Is Medical Identity Theft?

Kids on the Edge review – an antidote to the hysteria around gender identity

What a timely programme Kids on the Edge: The Gender Clinic (Channel 4) has proven itself to be. The first of a three-part series that will look at the mental health of children in the UK, this episode focuses in on the work of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust’s gender identity development services in London. These services are now greatly in demand: the clinic has gone from 40 referrals a year a decade ago to 1,400 in 2015. This rapid expansion of parents seeking help and advice has, depressingly, led to a kind of small-scale hysteria in recent times about what it means when children might be trans, bringing with it rabid front pages about them being “damaged” or “confused” by a TV show featuring a transgender character, for example.

I hope the people who rage about such things might also find the time to watch The Gender Clinic, which does a steady job of dismantling many of the panicked, inaccurate fears around what is clearly a complex process. In it, we follow two families discussing the possibility of hormone blockers for their children, which would pause puberty until, in time, a bigger decision can be made. There is Ashley, a headstrong young girl who was born a boy called Ashton, and her mum Terri, who is attempting to keep her daughter safe from bullying at school. And there is Matilda, who has an autistic spectrum disorder and whose gender identity is less defined, though by the end of the programme he is Matt at school. Rachel, Matt’s mother, is supportive but terrified of making the wrong decision for her child in either direction.

As a documentary, this is courageous enough to do what online discussion is often incapable of: explore the subtleties that get lost in the vicious polemics that can dominate the public reporting of such stories. Part of its effectiveness is down to director Peter Beard, who approaches the families with an obvious tenderness. He tells Terri – who is wondering whether to move the whole family again, to better serve Ash’s needs – that “there’s no instruction manual, is there?” His way with the kids is easy and kind. To get to the heart of what Ash is going through, he asks a simple question, made all the more devastating by the response. “What would be the best thing ever?” he asks her, as she plays. “Not being how I am,” she replies, casually, still playing.

It does not shy away from the trickier parts of the picture. Consultant psychiatrist Polly Carmichael explains that often, people are seeking certainty, and the reality is that in the case of hormone blockers, there is no certainty; research in this area is not far-reaching yet. The Tavistock’s staff sit cautiously in the middle of the many areas of debate. She talks about the impact of social media on young people seeking answers or reassurance. Ash, who declares that she will go to Sweden to get a womb transplant and then have a caesarian, Googles everything, says her mother. Carmichael says her patients understand the ideas but not the implications. Part of her role is to explain that “physical intervention is not the panacea to all things”.

There is a grotesque exaggeration perpetuated by some that the doctors and psychiatrists who treat children questioning their identities are trigger-happy gender-abolitionists, ready to strike every tomboy with a shot of testosterone if they so much as hint at cropping their hair. The reality is that the Tavistock’s team are articulate and circumspect. They deal with impossibly tough situations with a gentle level-headedness. This documentary makes clear that when a child is referred to their care, the process is thorough, considered and done in the best interests of both the child and the family.

What contributes to the wider hysteria about gender identity (a hysteria that can be fatal; I am thinking of the death of Lucy Meadows, the teacher who killed herself in 2013 after her gender reassignment became national news) is, in part, a desperate lack of empathy and knowledge. In showing its complicated workings, in showing that professional decisions may take in many different voices over many years, in telling stories that correct misconceptions simply by giving them a human face, perhaps The Gender Clinic might start to redress the balance. Carmichael ends the documentary by admitting that, right now, this is “an evolving picture”. But, she says, she knows one thing: that the young people who have taken this route feel it was right for them.

Kids on the Edge review – an antidote to the hysteria around gender identity

Transgender identity should not be diagnosed as mental disorder, says study

A transgender identity should no longer be diagnosed as a mental disorder, according to the first field study to evaluate a proposed change in the WHO International Classification of Diseases (ICD).

The mental distress experienced by many transgender people is primarily the result of social rejection and violence, the study found. Not, as has been assumed for decades, solely the result of being transgender.

The findings, published in the Lancet, show that viewing transgender people as having a mental illness might force them to get psychiatric care rather than the physical care they seek.

Authors of the “Removing transgender identity from the classification of mental disorders” study also warned that association with mental illness could be used by governments to deny decision-making authority to transgender people, in matters such as child custody and reproduction.

According to the first report by a UK parliamentary committee to tackle transgender issues, which was published earlier this year, as many as 650,000 people in the UK are gender incongruent to some degree. The transphobia they experience undermines their careers, incomes, living standards and mental and physical health, it found.

A third of transgender adults and half of “gender-variant” young people attempt suicide, and transgender people in the UK face high levels of transphobia on a daily basis, the Commons Women and Equalities Committee concluded. MPs urgedministers to draw up a new strategy to tackle discrimination in the NHS, prison service, police and schools.

Changing the classification in the ICD, the most influential medical bible, will have a significant impact on how transgender people are treated by the medical establishment, as well as how they are viewed by society.

“Stigma associated with both mental disorder and transgender identity has contributed to the precarious legal status, human rights violations and barriers to appropriate care among transgender people,” said senior author Professor Geoffrey Reed, of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

“The definition of transgender identity as a mental disorder has been misused to justify denial of healthcare and contributed to the perception that transgender people must be treated by psychiatric specialists, creating barriers to healthcare services. The definition has even been misused by some governments to deny self-determination and decision-making authority to transgender people in matters ranging from changing legal documents to child custody and reproduction.”

The study’s authors interviewed 250 transgender people. It is the first of several field trials and is currently being replicated in Brazil, France, India, Lebanon and South Africa.

“Our findings support the idea that distress and dysfunction may be the result of stigmatisation and maltreatment, rather than integral aspects of transgender identity,” said lead investigator Dr Rebeca Robles, of the Mexican National Institute of Psychiatry. “The next step is to confirm this in further studies in different countries, ahead of the approval of the WHO revision to the International Classification of Diseases in 2018.”

The study found 83% of participants had experienced psychological distress related to gender incongruence during their adolescence. More than three-quarters had experience social rejection related to gender incongruence, most commonly by family members, followed by school and workmates, and then friends.

Over 60% of participants had been the victim of violence as a result of their gender identity: in nearly half of these cases the violence was perpetrated by a family member. Psychological and physical violence were the most commonly reported, while some experienced sexual violence.

A WHO working group has recommended that transgender identity should no longer be classified as a mental disorder. But it would not be removed from the codebook. Instead, transgender would be moved into a newly created category: conditions related to sexual health.

This, however, has stirred further controversy. “I think there is a bit of a problem with the idea of putting it in a chapter on sexual health because it has nothing to do with sex,” said Dr Griet De Cuypere, a psychiatrist at the Center of Sexology and Gender at University Hospital in Ghent, Belgium, and a board member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. “If it’s possible to have it more separately, it would be better.”

Transgender identity should not be diagnosed as mental disorder, says study

Frédéric Gros: If you walk for many hours, you can escape your identity

It is a sunny spring Sunday and – joy! – I am off to Paris to go for a walk. Not any old walk, but a stroll with a guy who truly knows about strolling: Frédéric Gros, a professor of strolling. A philosopher of walking.

Strictly speaking, he is actually a professor of philosophy who writes about walking, but this is nitpicking. What do I care? I really like strolling. Absolutely nothing offers me better pleasure than strolling uphill, for hours, in purchase to rest under some flimsy piece of nylon material and then do it all yet again the next day.

This distinct stroll is not up a mountain, it really is in the Bois de Vincennes, Paris’s largest green room, but nonetheless. I am looking forward to a lungful of fresh air and the sort of insightful aperçus that potentially are offered only to a Frenchman with a secure academic position and a command of one of the much more expressive Latinate languages.

Strolling is not sport, he says, in the very first line of his guide, A Philosophy of Walking. Sport is a discipline, “an ethic, a labour”. It is a efficiency. Strolling, on the other hand, “is the greatest way to go much more gradually than any other approach that has ever been discovered”. If you want to go quicker, he says, will not walk. Do one thing else: drive, slide, fly.

I am hunting forward to going far more gradually. However I am worried about my footwear. I am wearing Nike trainers. Are they as well sporting? Gros would seem as if he may be much more of a leather brogues type of man. He can make a jibe at individuals who try to commodify walking and promote it back to us as “trekking”. Who insist on “outstanding socks”. And specific trousers with too numerous pockets.

My trousers have the usual quantity of pockets. And reading his guide has made me prolonged to be in a wild area with nothing at all to do but stroll. I want to go over the observations from his book: that walking is an escape from the notion of identity that there is a variety of serenity that comes with basically following a path that walking is a type of pure living.

This is the plan, even though the first indication that issues might not go exactly as I imagine comes as I wait in line for the Eurostar. Ping! An electronic mail lands in my inbox: “Carole, could you send me some concerns you will inquire prior to we meet? If I could prepare some, I would be much less stressed.”

Stressed? This does not seem right. Gros’s book, a surprise bestseller in France, talks of walking as a kind of “existence scoured bare” as a way of “experiencing the true”. Its pages are filled with calm reflections on the joys of moving gradually. He just doesn’t sound as if he should be the stressy type.

“It is the English,” he says when I last but not least meet him in a cafe opposite the Bois de Vincennes. He has a sheaf of printed out pages – answers to concerns I sent him earlier, a glass of rosé on the go (“I am nervous. Coffee will not support”) and an amused PhD student who he’s brought along for what he calls “translation aid”, however I suspect “moral help” may possibly be closer to the mark.

Do not be stressed, I tell him. I loved the book. It’s an examination of the philosophy of various thinkers for whom strolling was central to their function – Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Kant, Rousseau, Thoreau (they are all males it really is unclear if women never stroll or do not believe) – and Gros’s own ideas on the topic. It really is a passionate affirmation of the straightforward life, and joy in easy items. And it truly is beautifully written: clear, simple, exact the opposite of most academic creating. But, when I say this to Gros, he waves his hand. “I think it is almost certainly the translation. I do not consider it was so well written in French.” And he requires a nervous swig of his rosé.

Why are you nervous, I request. You must have carried out interviews before. “They have been in French,” he says. “And also… Um… I’m not so certain I am intriguing.”

It looks Gros has not acquired to grips with enjoying the sort of media-academic demi-god that these circumstances require. He’s one particular of the world’s top authorities on Foucault, and later on Arianna, his PhD pupil, lets slip that he grew to become a complete professor at thirty, which is practically unheard of, specially in the arts. And he has the sort of seems – tall, dark, Gallic – that could simply lend themselves to playing the older adore interest in a Television health care drama. But there he is, nervously glugging his wine and seeking across the table at me in a state of mild terror.

The cafe is noisy, and we choose to head out on our stroll. I am desperate to deflect him from his pages of very carefully prepared answers, and I figure interviewing him on the hoof may be the very best way. But the Bois is active. The Sunday strollers are out in force.

“This is the issue with strolling in the city,” says Gros. There are clouds of midges and gaggles of youngsters and we finish up circling a small patch of scrubby ground with overflowing litter bins. “I like to stroll for many hrs,” he says. “But in Paris…” We finish up retreating to a bench.

As a philosopher, his interest is in “ordinary issues”, he says. In Britain, academic philosophy is, largely, analytical philosophy. It is concerned with logic, with language. Whereas in France, he belongs to “a new generation that is concerned with the… quotidien. The daily.”

And you see the philosophy of walking as part of the philosophy of the everyday?

“Yes. It is nonetheless looking at the concerns of eternity, solitude, time and space… But on the basis of expertise. On the basis of quite simple, quite ordinary factors.”

He’d always appreciated strolling but it was only when he started out his philosophical scientific studies that Gros started out noticing how several excellent philosophers had been also great walkers. “That is, it was not just that strolling was a distraction from their operate. It was that walking was genuinely their element. It was the condition of their operate.”

And it was from this that he started out to feel about a guide. Each and every philosopher prospects to a reflection on various topics. So Rimbaud is the commencing stage for Gros’s thoughts on escape. Nerval on melancholy. Rousseau, who claimed to be unable to perform, or even feel, when not strolling, on the concept of becoming in a state of nature. And, my favourite, Thoreau, the writer of the very first philosophical treatise on walking, whose creating Gros quotes on simplicity and frugality and wilderness and the big difference among revenue and benefit.

Walking is of no revenue, it is only advantage, he says. Although the ideal quote of his is about when considering any course of action, 1 need to inquire: could someone do it in my place? And if the answer is yes, give it up.

“Yes. You can be replaced at your function, but not for your walk. Living, in the deepest sense, is anything that no 1 else can do for us.”

Walking, says Gros, is “exploring the mystery of presence. Presence to the world, to other people and to oneself… You find out when you walk that it emancipates you from space and time, from… vitesse.”

Speed?

“Yes, speediness. It emancipates you from speediness. And Rousseau says in his Confessions, when you stroll all is achievable. Your long term is as open as the sky in front of you. And if you stroll numerous hrs, you can escape your identity. There is a second when you stroll several hrs that you are only a entire body walking. Only that. You are no one. You have no historical past. You have no identity. You have no past. You have no potential. You are only a entire body walking.”

The 18th-century Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau claimed to be unable to perform, or even think, when not walking. Photograph: Roger-Viollet/Rex Functions

It’s the sort of observation that, possibly, operates far better with a French accent. But I purchase it. I really like every thing about strolling. The meditative state that it induces. The puppy tiredness at the finish of the day. The simply being in elegance. Or, as Gros would have it: “The sedimentation of the presence of the landscape in your entire body.”

Is there a school of philosophy that thinks that walking is not a match subject to study? “Yes! Yes, I do not think my colleagues would think about this a serious academic guide. It is as well transparent.

“And I experimented with to evoke some really serious philosophers this kind of as Nietzsche but the concerns I wanted to ask had been not, ‘What is the soul?’ or, ‘What is the relation among physique and area?’

“My queries were, ‘Where have they walked?’ ‘How have they walked?’ ‘How a lot of hours per day have they walked?’ I tried to see if their design of walking could be a manifestation of their thought. So, for instance, you have Kant with his stroll. Every day the very same stroll. The exact same time, the same place…”

He comes across as a very uninteresting man.

“He is!”

Does that also come through in his philosophy?

“We can say that there is a discipline at the forefront of it, yes.”

Nietzsche, on the other hand, is extremely unboring. He was the first philosopher Gros found. And the one who persuaded him to examine philosophy.

What prompted you to start off reading Nietzsche? Had been you a teenager?

“Yes!”

Had been you a depressed teenager?

“Yes!”

What result did Nietzsche have?

“There is an power in Nietzsche’s functions and this assisted me. You have the same energy in the act of strolling. You need power when you have to stroll for numerous hours.”

Have there been factors in your daily life where you’ve found walking useful to your psychological state?

“Absolutely. There is an component of repetition in the act of strolling exactly where you can overlook. And there is a tiredness. A peacefulness. I feel that when you are really alone you have a fragility. The emotions are more intense. You have far more of the feeling of the eternity of things. There are moments of vibration among your own physique and the landscape.”

You’re sounding like a hippy now, Frédéric, I say.

“I am!”

Now the Earth is vibrating.

“You are proper!”

Not that this is always a negative point. I really like the bit in the book where he writes about the act of packing a rucksack and the perpetual question that you uncover your self asking. “Is it essential?” On my last hiking trip, I inform him, I weighed my T-shirts to find the lightest ones. I weighed my knickers. I sawed my toothbrush in half with a bread knife. (I admit it: this was a step as well far.) But contemplating about placing anything in a rucksack and schlepping it up a mountain on your back is really a great test for thinking about no matter whether you genuinely do really require something, is not it, I say?

“It is.”

Do you manage it? Does that lesson come via when you’re at Ikea?

“I attempt to have that same psychological perspective every day. But it is difficult. The problem is that I…”

“Neglect?”

“No, I never fail to remember. I lie. I say, ‘Oh yes, this is really necessary?’”

What? Like a sports automobile? You say, ‘Yes, it is vital. I want that Ferrari?’

“Not a sports automobile but… Other items.”

A single of the items that comes across most strongly in the guide is a sense of escape. The freedom of leaving things behind. It sounds as if an academic philosophy division is a spot to get away from. Is that true?

“Quoi?” He appears confused and then Arianna, the PhD pupil, translates and they almost fall off the bench laughing.

“Yes! I’m not positive you have to create this. But I have a severe problem with academics. I think that I have imposter syndrome. I truly feel myself an imposter in philosophy. I believe this book about strolling is the 1st way to discover it. I’m creating another guide about disobeying. I think there is a link amongst walking and disobedience. I am writing about disobedience and getting ready myself to disobey.”

Disobey what?

“Academia.”

To leave it?

“If I have the courage, yes.”

Gros did not set out to become an academic. He went to Mexico City for two years and taught French. “And then I came back and I attempted to locate some interesting factors in my own life… But I didn’t know any! Absolutely nothing. It is quite embarrassing for me.”

So you imagined you’d read about the interesting lives of other folks?

“Yes. When I experimented with to write this book I wrote chapters about these elders since I think their lives are interesting. If my existence were fascinating, I feel I wouldn’t have to write. If you compose, it really is due to the fact your daily life isn’t essential.” He appears at me embarrassed. “Possibly it is diverse for you?”

Immanuel Kant took the same stroll at the identical time every single day. His route by means of the park in Königsberg, Prussia (now Russia), later on came to be known as ‘The Philosopher’s Walk’. Photograph: Alamy

I appreciate meeting individuals who are much more interesting than me, I inform him. And then I request him about the apogee of his guide, his definitive strolling experience, when he talks about how, in the mountains of the Cévennes, his favourite spot, in a time period of fine weather, he simply abandoned his rucksack. He invested two days strolling, alone, carrying completely practically nothing.

“It was this feeling of lightness. This fragility. There is nothing in between you and nature.”

Except being a bit hungry?

“A bit.”

There is a quote from Thoreau in the book, where he says that it is not the tyranny of public view that traps us. Instead, we are shackled by our personal judgments of ourselves. Do you believe that?

“I do.”

So what is the judgment that you have of by yourself that shackles you?

“This is tough. Yes, yes. No, no, no. Just 1 minute. I have a judgment. Yes…”

And he rolls his eyes and for a prolonged minute he just stares into room and thinks. Arianna and I sit and watch him.

“No, no, no, I am pondering.”

We wait for an additional lengthy minute. This is wonderful, I say. I interview lots and lots of individuals and they quite seldom ever feel just before giving an reply. I think this may be a first.

“It is a horrible query.”

“It is a horrible question. But you happen to be a philosopher, Frédéric. You are supposed to be considering about this stuff. It’s your occupation.”

“Yes, it is my work. So… Yes, the issue for me is that the books I have written have permitted me to understand to know, but the difficulty is what they have masked. You see. I know that the books I have written permit me to understand lots of items. But they have masked the troubles.”

You indicate that they have masked your real thoughts or feelings? Or they have masked you from living daily life.

“Yes. From residing. From living existence.”

So, do you think that you personally would have been much better off going for a stroll than creating a book about strolling?

“Yes… But… I had not adequate courage.”

Oh dear! Perhaps you want to go for a actually massive walk. 3 months or some thing. Is that anything you’d like to do?

“Yes. Of program. But existence is… complicated.”

Isn’t that the issue, I say – that there are almost certainly a lot of people who will read through the guide and say, ‘Oh, it truly is all really properly to speak about communing with nature, but I have received 3 little ones and a home loan and a wife.’

“Yes, and me, also.”

In reality he has two kids, now youngsters, and “they used to love to walk. I tried to teach them the joie de la marche. They walked 7, eight, 9 hours. I led them everywhere. But now… they refuse.”

They will come back to it, I say. But then I have started saying all method of comforting things to the philosopher of walking, which includes telling him that he demands to go for a walk. “Are you going somewhere great this summertime?”

“No. I do not consider. No.”

Perhaps strolling can be a state of thoughts in your head, I propose. Perhaps the concept of going for a walk can be as effective as in fact going for a stroll?

“No, no, no. I consider that the act of walking… stays essential.”

He has began to search depressed. So, you do not handle to walk significantly on a day-to-day basis? He shakes his head. Perhaps you ought to get a dog, I say. Then you have to walk even on a moist Tuesday in February.

We sit in silence for a bit.

So, Frédéric, you have written a entire guide about the straightforward daily life and joy of walking simply because your lifestyle is as well challenging to in fact go walking? Is this what occurred?

“Yes… But it is a lot more challenging than that.”

We finish the interview and go and drink wine. Gros appears done in. Arianna seems to be amused.

“You see,” he says. “I was right to be nervous! French journalists do not ask these type of questions. I… truly feel maybe I have a crise tomorrow.”

Oh dear. I hope not. Just read through your book, I tell him. Go for a stroll. Disobey.

Frédéric Gros will be speaking at the Bristol festival of ideas on Wed 14 May, 6-7pm

Frédéric Gros: If you walk for many hours, you can escape your identity