SALT LAKE CITY – People who say they are sick with certain diseases can jump to the front of the line to get a COVID-19 vaccine. When that person shows up to receive the shot, no one will ask for evidence. It’s all about the honor system, Utah state and county health officials have reported.
But even if there are no legal consequences, people who lie can, in fact, be punished. KSL researchers found that there could actually be a financial penalty for lying about being sick from getting a vaccine.
If you tell a county health department you have a comorbidity, this creates a health history. And health records are a preferred tool for insurance companies when trying to determine if you are worthy of life insurance.
“If it’s on your medical records, this life insurance company will consider it true,” said Brian King, a lawyer who specializes in fighting with life insurance companies to get them to pay claims.
King said having a serious medical condition listed on medical records can mean anything from having to pay more for life insurance to failing to meet life insurance requirements. You could even give a life insurance company an excuse not to pay your family after you die.
“People don’t think about it,” King said. “They don’t think about their future. They’re looking at the immediate need or desire they have to jump the line and get vaccinated sooner rather than later. It can come back and bite you a lot.”
(People) don’t think about their future. They are seeing the immediate need or desire to have to skip the line and get vaccinated sooner rather than later. It can come back and bite you a lot.
– Brian King, lawyer
Utah Representative Norm Thurston, R-Provo, has worked on many insurance-related laws in his time on the hill. He has seen how what he says in a person’s medical records can cost them incredibly.
“Insurance companies usually ask for medical records,” Thurston said.
Thurston said people routinely lie in their life insurance claims to keep premiums low, for example, by saying they don’t smoke when they do. That would be the opposite: lying about being sicker.
Thurston said this territory is somewhat unfamiliar and time will tell how much life insurance companies rely on medical records created in the vaccination process when determining a client’s risk. But he agreed with King that it is conceivable that it could cost a person his insurance.
“If someone writes on the form‘ I have diabetes ’or‘ I have uncontrolled blood pressure, ’that form would create a record and the life insurance company could get it,” Thurston said.
Medical records, of course, are not public records and health departments will not share them with life insurance companies without a patient’s permission. But a life insurance company may refuse to insure that patient if it refuses to give permission to view medical records.
“We hope people are honest,” Salt Lake County Department of Health spokesman Nick Rupp told KSL TV, though he knows the expectation is a bit confusing.
The county encountered liars even before expanding the criteria to allow people with certain comorbidities to get the vaccine in Utah.
“We’ve had a few people who, through the system, have lied about their date of birth to be eligible before they should be,” he said.