MIB - Medical Information Bureau

  • There is a serious question of public policy for this Committee to examine in hush-hush Bureaus, the MIB, and other "CIA type" techniques, which collusively, and without knowledge of the consumer, provide for the exchange of very personal information among hundreds of insurance companies.

--  Statement of Leonard Woodcock, President, United Automobile Workers (p4) 

1972 - GOV (Senate) - Commercial Health and Accident Insurance Industry,  Philip Hart (D-MI)

  • 1983 - LC - MIB, Inc. v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue
    • United States Tax Court
    • Date published: Feb 22, 1983
    • 80 T.C. 438 (U.S.T.C. 1983)
    • Docket No. 5297-81
    • Opinion - [link-CaseText]
      • Petitioner's Organization and Operation
      • The origin of the petitioner can be traced back to at least as early as 1890, when a group of domestic life insurance medical directors formed the “Rejection Exchange” for the exchange of medical and other information of underwriting significance. In 1902, the functions of the “Rejection Exchange” were taken over by the Association of Life Insurance Medical Directors of  America, a professional organization of medical directors, which thereafter conducted the exchange under the name “Medical Information Bureau” (bureau). In 1947, the bureau was reorganized as a separate, unincorporated nonprofit association.
      • On May 10, 1978, petitioner was organized under Delaware law as a nonprofit, membership corporation, and on May 25, 1978, succeeded to the bureau's functions and assumed all its assets and liabilities. On or about July 3, 1978, petitioner filed with respondent a Form 1024, Application for Recognition of Exemption Under Section 501(a), seeking recognition of tax exemption as a business league under section 501(c)(6). By letter dated April 17, 1980, respondent advised petitioner that its application for exemption had been denied.
        • In 1948, the bureau was issued a ruling by the Internal Revenue Service that it qualified for exemption under the predecessor of sec. 501(c)(6).
          • 4. Jockey Club v. United States, 133 Ct. Cl. 787, 137 F. Supp. 419 (1956), should be compared with National Leather & Shoe Finders Association v. Commissioner, 9 T.C. 121, 126 (1947), in which we found that an organization was not engaged in a regular business of a kind ordinarily carried on for profit when it published a trade magazine of an educational nature and circulated it free of charge to nonmembers.