Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida has upset a number of plan members by accidentally printing social security numbers on the outside of envelopes sent out in the last couple of weeks.

From the reports, this shouldn't have happened. Sure, mistakes happen but the company had phased out using SSNs for its plan members ... except for this one group of policy holders. Why they didn't include this group is not clear in the article.

I have to applaud the company, however, for they way it has responded to the incident. The spokesperson acknowledges that it has upset people and that it should not have happened. He also invites affected members to contact the company so they can see what can be done to "make it right":

RedNova News - Health - Blue Cross Faux Pas Ticks Off Clients

"Two years ago, Blue Cross voluntarily began to do away with Social Security-based policynumbers. The old IDs, however, were not updated for one group of customers. In addition, the policynumber field that should have been omitted from the label was still present, said Randy Kammer, the company's vice president of regulatory affairs and public policy.

"We made an error and we apologize," Kammer said Wednesday. "If people feel like they're damaged, they should come to us and tell us what they feel the nature of the damage was and see what we can do to make it right."

"But I don't think there is any damage."

But just in case, the insurer said it will pay affected policyholders any expenses involved in monitoring of their credit reports.

Kammer refers to the error as case of "no harm, no foul," because all the affected letters were believed to have reached their recipients, since none were returned.

"There shouldn't be any identity theft unless you've got rogue postal carriers out there copying down numbers," she said."

Labels: identity theft, information breaches