Healthcare Reform Opponents Stoop to Another Ethics Lowpoint
February 23rd, 2010I got a mailer this past weekend that really pissed me off. The outside was marked “2010 Medicare Update” and indicated that enclosed was a “Non-Governmental Document.”
On the inside, the mailer tells me that the president has announced new medicare reform guidelines that I need to understand in order to know how they will affect me. All I have to do is tell them what my areas of interest are and give them some personal information.
From the questions, this unknown organization will know my phone number, my age and my spouse’s age, and if I am interested in in-home and long term care, Medicare supplement protection, prescription drug plans, and final expense/estate planning.
Then I am to send this information to a generic processing center.
This mailer is clearly designed to make me worry about my Medicare (full disclosure, I am not on Medicare and won’t be for a while yet). Whether its purpose is to sell me insurance or get me to oppose the reform is unclear, but in either case, the idea that they would be asking for my personal information without disclosing who I am giving that information to is a problem, ethically, at a minimum.
