• mesamune@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    It doesn’t. There is no truely unique ID in the US.

    Source: myself. Worked on health insurance and it was hell.

    • CodexArcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      13 days ago

      It’s wild too. I’ve been in the hospital a lot lately and in addition to a bar-code wristband, every healthcare worker, before doing anything with me (the patient) will ask my full name and either birthday or address and then double-check it against the wrist band. This is to make sure, at every step, that they didn’t accidentally swap in some other patient with the same name. (Not so uncommon, lots of men have their father’s name.)

      Meanwhile in like Iceland, everyone gets assigned a personal GPG key at birth so you can just present you public cert as identification, not to mention send private messages and secure your state-assigned crypto-wallet. Not saying such a system is without flaw but it seems a lot better than what we’re doing!

      • jacksilver@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        You want them to do that regardless of the how the country keeps track of individuals. The point of all that asking is to make sure they have the right patient for the right procedure.

        You don’t want to have something amputated or removed unless you have to.