back to article Dutch insurers demand nudes from breast cancer patients despite ban

Dutch health insurers are reportedly forcing breast cancer patients to submit photos of their breasts prior to reconstructive surgery despite a government ban on precisely that. That sounds pretty bad but it gets worse: These insurers keep losing their copies of these highly intimate pictures, one way or another. Some …

  1. KillStuffMount

    A constant stream of boobs.

    In every sense.

    1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
      Joke

      Allo, Allo

      Have they tried securing these images of boobies within Knockwurst sausages? They certainly kept van Klomp's paintings of the fallen Madonna's (big) boobies (mostly) safe from the Germans

  2. James O'Shea Silver badge

    So... when will the, umm, vigorous action, involving torches, pitchforks, cutlasses, and nooses, going to take place? Personally, I'd string whoever is responsible for this up by his balls and prod his buttocks with a pitchfork a few times, but I have a bad attitude. Oh, and take pix. Lots of pix. And pass them to another counter. Or two. Or three.

    1. Mark 85

      Not sure why you've had downvotes but your solution sounds reasonable to me.

      1. James O'Shea Silver badge

        I have at least one phantom downvoter who looks up my posts and adds a downvote every now and again. I think that I know who it is, but, frankly, I don't give a damn.

  3. Tron Silver badge

    As with the Horizon case, there is an obvious solution.

    Put those responsible, all the way up the chain of command, in prison.

    We really need to be putting more executives and CEOs behind bars for stuff like this. Pour discourager les autres.

    1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

      Re: As with the Horizon case, there is an obvious solution.

      This is a combination of fraud and power-harrassment -- it can't just be about looking at boobs, as you can see as many as you want for free on the Internet.

      I'm surprised there hasn't been a series of back-alley beat-downs, house-, and boat-burnings of relevant boards-of-directors.

      From TFA: Some hospitals have since refused to do this, citing the sensitive nature of the images and potential privacy nightmares. That sounds as though those hospitals' directors know they can't keep their patients' info secure.

  4. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    Are these companies subject to GDPR?

    Just wondering out loud here...

    Seems like a fairly egregious loss of personal information and moreover of personal information that they were specifically not permitted to collect in the first place.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Alternative solutions please

    There is no end to incompetence. No you cannot put everyone in prison.

    Cyber-security must be simpler or done for them centrally. Optimally with open-source code. Any volunteers?

    1. SundogUK Silver badge

      Re: Alternative solutions please

      Nah. Put them all in prison.

    2. Jedit Silver badge
      Trollface

      "No you cannot put everyone in prison."

      OK, death sentence it is then.

      Joking aside: if the CEOs aren't going to prison for this, then at the very least the companies need to receive fines so punitive that it bankrupts them. The only way they'll ever stop is if they cannot make money from what they're doing.

    3. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

      Re: Alternative solutions please

      In the main, computer security isn't about bad code (though bad code surely is involved). It's about bad procedures and priorities, and about human nature.

      The greatest firewall in the world becomes not-the-greatest, if it ships with poorly-chosen defaults, because human nature and bad priorities means bosses will tell their tech-minions to "Just get it up and running A.S.A.P. -- we don't have time for anything else."

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Alternative solutions please

      "No you cannot put everyone in prison."

      Not *everyone*. Just incompetent CEOs and that's a trivial thing to do, only will to do so is missing. Because bribes, of course.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It’s nice to know that health insurers suck outside the USA, too

    Scummy deniers of health care, all.

  7. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Absolutely appalling

    There should be serious consequences for those responsible. Dutch health insures have become complete control freaks, requiring huge written reports and intervention plans for even the simplest medical procedure (like for the physiotherapy needed for a sprained ankle (I kid you not)), ostensibly to ensure money isn't wasted, but in practice it drives costs up and increasing delays. This is just one of the worst excesses of this system.

  8. Tubz Silver badge

    Health Minister did not immediately respond to our questions .. brown envelopes from Insurance reps to ensure he's unavailable?

  9. Lord Elpuss Silver badge

    "Very annoying" - can't believe that's what they actually said.

    Doing a bit of reverse-reverse-translation gets me to "heel vervelend"; which while literally meaning annoying, irritating, exasperating, generally has a somewhat more sympathetic interpretation in Dutch.

    "I have a cold." "Ach, wat vervelend." Meaning: "Oh, that sucks/sorry to hear that."

  10. Martin 66

    Sounds like a storm in a D cup

    I'll get my coat.

  11. PRR Silver badge
    WTF?

    How does the company know....

    > forcing breast cancer patients to submit photos of their breasts

    What does that prove?? How does the company know the photo is of MY(*) breast? As said, there's lots of breasts online. Many very impressive but also surely some disappointments. Also I remember Chinese-language newspapers advertising breast operations with explicit before-and-after photos: submit a before-photo. ---Hey! "breast reconstruction" in an UN-safe search browser turns up appropriate images (obviously).

    Nobody wants pictures of my man-parts, my gall-bladder. The hospital THREW OUT pictures of my appendix (that was an impressive scar).

    (*) Yes, male-type people get breast diseases and sometimes reconstruction.

  12. herman Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Booby traps

    One would think that there are enough boob pics and vids online already.

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