GOVERNMENT & MEDICINE

News in brief - April 28, 2008

Mass. reform board raises health plan affordability standards - NIH says Social Security data on stolen laptop

Mass. reform board raises health plan affordability standards

The Connector Authority, which oversees Massachusetts' comprehensive health system reform program, unanimously agreed April 10 to a 10% increase in standards for health plan premium affordability. The sliding-scale system determines if health plans are affordable to residents and therefore whether they must purchase coverage under the states' individual health insurance mandate.

This means an individual earning up to 250% of the federal poverty level, or $26,016 annually, is now expected to be able to afford premiums of $77 a month in 2008, up $7 from the 2007 affordability level. The calculations do not include co-pays. The move comes a few weeks after the board approved 10% premium hikes for private state-subsidized Commonwealth Connector health plans.

NIH says Social Security data on stolen laptop

A laptop computer stolen from the trunk of a researcher working for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute actually did contain Social Security numbers of participants in a cardiac study, according to a spokeswoman for the NHLBI, part of the National Institutes of Health. An initial examination did not turn up any Social Security data, said NHLBI spokeswoman Susan Dambrauskas. However, a subsequent scan of the 36,000 files on the computer located an unidentified file containing a list of 1,281 study participants, including their Social Security numbers, said Dambrauskas.

The NIH sent letters on April 9 to participants whose names were in the unidentified file, said Dambrauskas. It apologized for the mishap and offered free credit services to monitor the participants' credit reports, she said. The NIH also will provide up to $20,000 of identity theft coverage for each of the those patients. The laptop, stolen on Feb. 23, contained unencrypted information on 3,078 participants in a cardiac study conducted between 2001 and 2007. The computer had not been recovered as of press time in mid-April.