Who can ask for your Social Security number?

Herb Weisbaum • Profile • E-mail

We all have to fill out forms. There are forms to fill out at the hospital, forms to complete at the dentist, at the bank, etc. But Ruth from Washington wants to know when is it OK to fill in your Social Security number on forms that ask for it.

My husband went to a new dentist and on the forms you fill out when seeing a new doctor is a space for a Social Security number. When my husband said he didn’t want to give out the number, he was told the dentist needed it for identification and insurance purposes. I know our insurance ID number with Premera Blue Cross no longer has anything to do with our SSN. Do you think people should willingly give out their SSN anywhere?
Ruth R., Mountlake Terrace, WA

You have every reason to guard your Social Security number and give it out only when absolutely necessary. Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, says there is “a significant amount of evidence showing ID theft cases emanate from medical offices.”

Many insurance companies, including Premera Blue Cross, no longer use the Social Security number as a primary identifier and no longer print it on their ID cards.

So why would the new dentist want your husband’s Social Security number if he already provided his insurance information? Nabil Istafanos, Premera’s Vice President of Compliance and Ethics, says the Social Security number is often needed “when coordinating benefits among different insurance carriers.”

Some patients have coverage from both their own job and their spouse’s employer. In those situations Social Security numbers are still used to figure out what part of the claim each carrier should pay. Your Premera ID number means nothing to other health insurance companies, but they can identify you through your Social Security number. In addition, all Medicare claims are based on a patient’s Social Security number.

If your new doctor is asking for a Social Security number, ask if they really need it. If you need a simple procedure, at a small office, only one insurance company is involved, and there’s no Medicare claim, your insurance ID number may be enough. Just remember, if there’s any sort of problem with processing the claim, the lack of a Social Security number could slow down reimbursement.

Also, there are no laws prohibiting a medical provider from denying service if you refuse to supply your Social Security number, according to Givens.

Social Security history
The Social Security number was never designed to be a personal identifier. In fact, when the Social Security law was passed in 1935, the Social Security Account Number, its original name, was meant to identify the account, not the person.

That’s not the case today. There are few prohibitions against the use of the Social Security number in the private sector and it is widely used by the federal government. It is “in such extraordinarily wide use” it has become “a de facto personal identifier,” according to a Health and Human Services White Paper.

In July of 1998, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed creating a unique identifier for health purposes. Using a number other than the patient’s Social Security number would increase privacy and limit the health provider’s access to a patient’s credit and financial information. No action has been taken on this proposal.

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