RetirementPlan, to be clear no 'outcome is better for' me. I am not VHI or Laya or Irish Life, I am explaining the Data Protection Office rule.
With respect, you seem to be able to project yourself into the roles of VHI and the family member when it comes to how this thing works, so its not unreasonable to suggest that you project yourself into the role of VHI in assessing your proposal that I impersonate family members by getting their login details.
How it is a better outcome to get them to give me their login details rather than them just giving me the receipt for their GP visit and asking me to handle the claim?
There is no 'Data Protection Office' rule, by the way. In Ireland, we have the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner. There is nothing in the GDPR (which comes from Europe) that stops me from making a claim on a receipt that a family member has handed to me.
If you are able to log in to their accounts, they have made the decision to allow you to do so by providing passwords. If you stole their log in details, that's on you.
Your proposal would require both them and me to breach the VHI terms of use, which say; (my
bolding for emphasis)
Policyholders act for all members included on the policy with regard to the administration of the policy (e.g. cover changes, payments/refunds, renewals, and addition/deletion of dependants. Use for any other purpose is prohibited.
Members must keep their login details secret and must not record them in a form or manner which would be intelligible or otherwise accessible to an unauthorised person.
This is not a workable proposal.
In general, sharing passwords is a very poor security practice. VHI should absolutely NOT be building systems that require people to share passwords and impersonate each other.
'How families work'. My guess is that my family works very different to yours. I do not assume the right to any other adults medical visits. What about separation/divorce families, where there are court orders in place that a policy must be maintained? What way does that family work?
It makes no difference to me what data you want or have, my post was attempting to explain that if you, your adult child or your spouse attends a Consultant, a Fertility specialist, an Obstetrician, a STI visit, a GP, a Counsellor, a Psychiatrist, a Mental Health admission, a miscarriage trauma, a gambling/substance abuse addiction that they do not want you to know about you feel that because you pay their insurance you should be entitled to know?
Where does the access to the information stop?
Or is it a free for all? For everything, inpatient and outpatient?
These are adults we are discussing, I would whole heartedly agree for minors but an adult is an adult regardless if they are your children or not.
Please stop spinning this as some kind of patriarchal coercive controlling issue. The issue here is that a young adult goes to the GP, I pay for their GP visit, they give me the receipt from the GP. It is that simple. I'm currently unable to claim for this receipt from VHI.
There is nothing in my proposal that would stop the adult from looking after their own claims. I'm not trying to prevent anyone from looking after their own claims. I'm looking at a GP receipt and a dentist receipt from young adults in the house in front of me, both transactions that I have paid for, and VHI are stopping me from making a claim on the policy that I also paid for.
Organisations like VHI are spending millions to put their services online. It is VERY MUCH to VHIs benefit to allow me to do my business online. Their over zealous interpretation of GDPR has created an unintended consequence of a barrier to online adoption of services. I can claim with a simple signature on a paper form, but not through their online system. I'm actually doing VHI a very big favour by nudging them on to ensure that their online system mirrors their paper system.
If they are happy to discuss all visits with you, you should have no problem organising your paperwork with the appropriate consent provided to the insurer. If not, thankfully they have their own rights due to GDPR.
They ARE happy to discuss these visits with me. I can organise my paperwork however I like, but I can't make an online claim for the receipts that the family members have handed to me.
I feel I'll have to agree to disagree with you on this topic but your adult children and spouse should hold the same right over their medical information as you enjoy as the payer.
I hope your insurer can come up with a solution to help you manage it online.
There is nothing in my proposal that reduces the rights of other family members to privacy of their medical information. If they want to take on the admin workload, I'll be only too delighted. But they generally don't.