For example, if you file a health insurance application or a claim for benefits with many insurance companies, they often will run a check on your health history through a national computerized clearinghouse that maintains insurance information. This information includes data about previous insurance claims you may have made. Insurance companies believe that they have a right to data of this kind, since the information protects them from having to pay for health care costs that come about due to "preexisting conditions," which many insurance policies limit or exclude. Too, if you have suffered from poor health in the past, and were covered by insurance, there are probably data about your health history on file in such a national computerized clearinghouse; by accessing information about you, an insurance company is able to form a judgment as to whether you are an excessive risk. Like any information about you that has been compiled and is furnished without your consent, these data about your health history--maintained by agencies that service insurance companies--are subject to possible abuse. Information on file can and is used to protect the interests of subscribing insurance companies; your own interests may not be served in the process. Not only might you be denied future insurance benefits, but the information maintained about you is subject to whatever use the insurance clearinghouse believes is appropriate. As yet, laws to secure a true measure of personal privacy have not been passed. This has been one of the goals of organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union. There is a second insurance-related issue that has to do with confidentiality. If you have group health insurance through your employer, it will be necessary for your therapist to complete reports about you in order for you to receive benefits under your insurance plan. (I am assuming here that your insurance offers coverage for counseling, psychotherapy, or psychiatry.) The reports filed by your therapist with the group health insurance company are sometimes filed _through your employer_, and sometimes employers require their group health companies to provide _them_ with information about health care supplied to their employees. In either way, the fact that you are in therapy and the general reasons for your need for therapy may come to the attention of your employer. {264} If your employer is a large company or organization, such information will probably be filed in your employer's business or insurance office and laid to rest; it will probably not come to the attention of individuals you actually deal with in your work. But it may. In a smaller company, there is a greater risk. If you are really concerned about this possibility, ask your insurance officer how health claims are handled and whether health information is requested by your employer from the insurance company.