The health insurance company Aetna has just slapped with a class-action lawsuit after accidentally outing as many as 12,000 patients taking HIV medications.
On July 28, Aetna sent out information about HIV meds and pharmacy benefits in envelopes. No big real right? Except that the paperwork was sent in envelopes with see-through plastic windows that clearly displayed each patient’s full name, address, and what HIV medications they were taking.
Now, the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania, the Legal Action Center, and the law-firm Berger & Montague P.C. have filed a lawsuit against the insurance provider on behalf of the patients.
The lawsuit’s lead plaintiff is Pennsylvania man whose sister learned he was taking HIV meds through the letter. The man is HIV-negative but taking the meds as a precautionary measure. To help protect his identify, the lawsuit uses the pseudonym Andrew Beckett, after Tom Hanks’ character in the 1993 AIDS drama Philadelphia.
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In a follow-up letter, Aetna apologized to patients for the error, placing the blame on an unnamed vendor that had sent out the mailings.
“The vendor handling the mailing had used a window envelope, and, in some cases, the letter could have shifted within the envelope in a way that allowed personal health information to be viewable through the window,” the company said. “We sincerely apologize to those affected.”
It’s not clear how many patients had their personal info revealed, but Aetna says it hopes to “earn back” their trust.
Related: This poz bear says he is DONE internalizing other people’s shame and HIV stigma
JaredMacBride
Welcome to The USA, where the first thing you do after you f##!k something up is look for someone else to blame.
1898
aetna is a terrible company and they’ve been a terrible company for a long time. the way they treat their medicare part D customers is horrendous
Juanjo
Whether they used an off-site vendor to stuff envelopes and mail them or not is irrelevant. By law it is their responsibility to protect the confidentiality of patient medical information. They are responsible for the screw-ups of their agents regardless.
Paco
The lawyers will be happy. They are usually the only ones making any money from class action lawsuits. Everyone else gets a $5.00 off coupon.
BigWill
Aetna is a shi**y company; god help you if they’re your insurer. I hope they suffer the fate of Gawker and are sued into oblivion over this.
DCguy
But wait!! Republicans keep saying that Big corporations never make mistakes, and they are the solution to everything, and that govt. healthcare would never work because the big companies do it so much better!
(Even though every single other 1st world country has govt. healthcare and much lower payments).
So somehow this can’t be Aetna’s fault, it must be the government right Republicans!?