How did my insurance get billed for someone else?

This happened about a decade ago to my SO and It still bothers me. He never did anything about it.

We were applying for an apartment and the background check popped someone in another state across the country (US) with same name and DOB as SO. This guy recently had several drug related arrests. We sorted it out easy bc they just compared licenses.

Around the same period. I had been checking our insurance. Side note. Our insurance is very good (lucky and we pay $$$… 200 deductible and pretty much 100% coverage)

My SO had a claim submitted and paid for hospital stay in this same state as the guy above for a drug related incident. One would assume same guy.

How did this happen? Did they just try the name and DOB … find our insurance and submit it. Wouldn't they need to verify the insurance ID or SSN? Is this legal? Would this be a Hippa violation? I mean we could see the EOB which shows what this stranger was treated for.

I really don't think this was stolen identity. Nothing else has ever happened and I think it was really just coincidence same name and DOB.

I really wish he escalated this. He is kind of person that picks his battles and it's hard to convince otherwise. It's probably way too late and I assume our portal doesn't go that car back to look it up now. (Still same insurance).

Please appease my curiosity of how this could have happened and how serious it is. Still bothers me bc my over active brain runs scenarios where like one day somehow there'd be a scenario where lit would come up. … oh well sir you are denied X bc you did drugs 20 years ago. I kmow not rationale.

submitted by /u/WonderChopstix
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