After spending the past few months getting an earful from angry veterans and posturing politicians, the Veterans Affairs Department thought it might begin to distance itself from the stigma of May's stolen laptop and hard drive containing sensitive information about millions of veterans and their spouses. Not so. Veterans Affairs Monday delivered cringe-inducing news that a PC containing personal information on thousands of veterans is missing from a Unisys office.

The VA's initial estimates indicate that the computer contained information on about 5,000 patients treated in Philadelphia, 11,000 patients treated in Pittsburgh, and 2,000 deceased patients. The VA is also investigating the possibility the computer may have contained information on another 20,000 people who received care through the Pittsburgh medical center.

The Mitt Romney administration in Massachusetts is reconsidering a plan to keep track of who buys healthcare insurance by collecting their Social Security numbers, after insurance companies and business groups warned it could put residents at greater risk of identity theft.

``When you take a person's name, address, and Social Security number and put them all together, those are the key pieces that identity thieves are looking for," said Eric Linzer , a spokesman for Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, a trade group for insurers. ``Collecting them every month and having them sit in the database and go through multiple hands increases the risk."