Regis Duvignau/ Reuters
Health insurance companies have been purchasing personal data—including information about patients’ race, TV habits, and social-media posts—and could use it to set insurance rates, according to a Tuesday report co-authored by NPR and ProPublica. The data comes from brokers like LexisNexis and IBM Watson Health, the report notes, and can be fed into complex algorithms that determine how much an insurer might have to pay for health coverage. Although ProPublica and NPR did not find any documented instances of insurers using the data to set rates, and some brokers have policies discouraging the use of data for that purpose, they interviewed one scientist who said that “I can’t say it hasn’t happened.” Unlike specific medical information, which is protected under HIPAA, there is little to no regulation of this personal data. Advocates are concerned that this data might not accurately predict health outcomes—causing some patients to have illegitimately high rates—and that even if the data is predictive, it’s unethical to charge vulnerable consumers more. The report notes that these possibilities don’t seem to bother the companies involved. At one conference, a data salesman told a reporter that “God forbid you live on the wrong street these days...You’re going to get lumped in with a lot of bad things.”