by Tony Chen

This may be the most scary form of identity theft - imagine a thief using YOUR name, your health record, and your insurance info to get an expensive medical procedure done. Just ask Lind Weaver (and read this BusinessWeek article) - she quite literally had to kick the door down of the local hospital CEO to tell him that her leg wasn't amputated and thus she shouldn't have been charged for it! What's worse - now the thief's medical records are intermingled with hers (her thief had diabetes, but she doesn't).

At least with credit reports, you can clean it up and make corrections. with medical ID theft, good luck...

Get ready for more regulations, more sophisticated policies. Just like we need a picture ID to board a plane, maybe we'll need a picture ID to get surgery, too.