It's hard to believe that someone involved in data processing in this day and age would just say, "So you want the social security # printed outside the envelope where anybody and everybody can see it? No problem." People in my company have gotten fired for being careless with clients' personal information. If we send PI (personal information) electronically, it has to be encrypted. The people who work on health care software are especially sensitive about this. It's not just carelessness, it's a reckless disregard of good practices to do something like this.
I don't want to give these people any more info than I absolutely have to.

There is going to be a big HIPA awareness event in Hawaii for the heads of the departments that were responsible.

If you Californians would just pay more taxes, none of this would have happened.

It's all Bush's fault.

On a more serious note, the head of Toyota apologized, publicly, for the recall and announced what steps he was taking to prevent further, similar problems. Still not satisfied? There are other auto makers.

Don't like government healthcare? I only know of two ways to get a new government. Both are fairly drastic.

My guess is somebody was told to do a run of labels, under the assumption that they were going to be stuck on a letter or card meant to go inside an envelope. Then some other clueless person decided to stick the labels on the outside of the envelope instead.

But yeah, this sounds exactly like the kinds of stories I hear about the NHS in Great Britain. And: it also points up the need to devise a more secure method of identification for credit purposes. SSN numbers were never meant to be that. Prior to about 1985, public disclosure of SSNs was routine -- a college I went to for a couple of semesters used your SSN as your student ID, and posted exam results in public where the SSNs were used to identify students.

Do think more about this.

When government runs health care, just what mechanism would keep your identity, and thus benefits package, secure?

I work in a healthcare company. I screamed, "HIPAA HIPAA HIPAA!" I saw this. THIS is one more reason why I am completely against a govt run health care plan. We manage to keep our clients private information... well... private.

Brain dead is a pre-requisite for government employment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlhV1YDDs8c

"I work in a healthcare company. I screamed, "HIPAA HIPAA HIPAA!" I saw this. THIS is one more reason why I am completely against a govt run health care plan. We manage to keep our clients private information... well... private."

Ditto. Big time ditto.

it also points up the need to devise a more secure method of identification for credit purposes. SSN numbers were never meant to be that. Prior to about 1985, public disclosure of SSNs was routine -- a college I went to for a couple of semesters used your SSN as your student ID, and posted exam results in public where the SSNs were used to identify students.

The problem is not the use of SSNs for identification, the problem is confusion (especially on the part of banks and credit agencies, who should know better) between identification and authentication. Identification is about knowing which person is being discussed; authentication is about knowing that the person talking to you is who they say they are. SSNs are great identifiers, but they're not authenticators because they're not secret.

HIPAA has the right idea when it comes to penalties for revealing personal information. How to implement that for government agencies, whose employees can't be fired for ruining the lives of innocent people, is difficult to say.

The numbers were printed on the outside of envelopes sent to elderly patients of the Adult Day Health Care program, many of whom are blind or have Alzheimer's disease or other cognitive disabilities. The Department of Health Care Services sent the envelopes, which contained change-of-benefit notices, Feb. 1.

Officials have since sent follow-up letters advising recipients to destroy the envelopes and are advising patients to contact credit agencies to put a freeze on new accounts.

DUMBER THAN A BAG OF HAMMERS!!!

(A speeeeecial kind of stupid, for sure.)

"Officials have since sent follow-up letters advising recipients to destroy the envelopes and are advising patients to contact credit agencies to put a freeze on new accounts."

I can't help but notice the redundancy of this. So, you sent out a bunch of letters to patients who are affected with blindness, dementia, or any other mental disability to address the previous "letters" you sent out. Riiiiiight... because that just makes is aaaalllll better.

Nevermind the possibility that these people probably never saw the first letters to begin with (because they are BLIND!), or the fact that they are probaly not even cognitive enough to know what the hell the letter is talking about, or nevermind that they are probably not able to stop any new accounts that have problaby already occured before they get the "follow up letter" advising them to be on the lookout, or nevermind that because of this, they could possibly we wiped out already. Nope. A follow up letter to people with mental disabilities and limited capacity should do just nicely.

Yeah... I'm gonna hop right on the Stupid Express (aka: Gov't run Healthcare) bandwagon and ride it all the way iditoville (aka: Washington).

Having review your article, has learnt suited for itself a allowance a a good of the new. Unfortunately, something has not understood. Where you took this information and where it is workable to present more?