Medical IDs were never a popular idea when they were first conceived, even while they can do potential good in making it easy to obtain a patient's medical information quickly (Peril). The idea is a good one in that it makes a patient's medical information readily available to doctors wherever the patient is when they are in need of treatment. Their whole records can be reviewed at once and in one place, listing allergies, medications etc., and they would know who to contact in an emergency. It makes the records portable when a patients changes jobs or insurers. But such computerized records are potentially open to wide abuses. We have only to look at the two recent cases of abuse of private data at Lexis-Nexis and ChoicePoint, Inc., where criminals obtained private financial information and used it to defraud citizens.
It is not difficult to see how medical data which is computerized and placed under one medical ID number, along with the patient's personal information and social security number, could also be abused and used for fraudulent purposes, used for discrimination against people, and all manner of scenarios. Recall the discrimination problems those with HIV infections face when such data is released. In the age of genetic screening, release of this data would identify people as being predisposed to developing certain illnesses which would be another reason to fear discrimination, even though it is illegal to discriminate against people for such medical reasons. It is doubtful, as has been suggested, that penalties for selling such information could be high enough to prevent this from happening(Peril). There is always a buyer, and if the price is right - a seller. After all, the death penalty does not act as a deterrent to murderers.
Computer hackers abound who could get into such files, and even maliciously change the data, costing patients their lives. Imagine the scenario of terrorists hacking in...