Obamacare?s Branch of the NSA | National Review Online
The Department of Health and Human Services is about to hire an army of patient navigators to inform Americans about the subsidized insurance promised by Obamacare and assist them in enrolling. These organizers will be guided by the new Federal Data Hub, which will give them access to reams of personal information compiled by federal agencies ranging from the IRS to the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration. The federal government is planning to quietly enact what could be the largest consolidation of personal data in the history of the republic, Paul Howard of the Manhattan Institute and Stephen T. Parente, a University of Minnesota finance professor, wrote in USA Today. No wonder that there are concerns about everything from identity theft to the ability of navigators to use the system to register Obamacare participants to vote.
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Because 34 states have declined to set up their own insurance exchanges, the job of guiding exchange enrollees in those states has been left to Washington. The identity of the groups who will get the Sebelius grants isnt yet known, but Politico reports they are likely to include Planned Parenthood, senior-citizen advocacy organizations, and churches.
So far everything weve learned indicates the navigators will be flying blind, or could well be unsafe at any speed. In June, the Government Accountability Office reported that HHS is considering allowing navigators to assist with outreach and enrollment tasks even before completing their formal training. The reason? Like so much of Obamacare, the navigators program is behind schedule and drowning in its own complexity.
This spring, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee lawyers were also told by HHS that, despite the fact that navigators will have access to sensitive data such as Social Security numbers and tax returns,
there will be no criminal background checks required for them. Indeed, they wont even have to have high-school diplomas. Both U.S. Census Bureau and IRS employees must meet those minimum standards, if only because no one wants someone who has been convicted of identity theft getting near Americans personal records. But HHS is unconcerned. It points out that navigators will have to take a 2030 hour online course about how the 1,200-page law works, which, given its demonstrated complexity, is like giving someone a first-aid course and then making him a med-school professor. I want to assure you and all Americans that, when they fill out their [health-insurance] marketplace applications, they can trust the information theyre providing is protected, said Marilyn Tavenner, head of HHSs Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, at a congressional hearing last week. In the age of Wikileaks and IRS abuses, somehow that isnt very comforting.
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Indeed, voter registration is among the goals of the folks hawking Obamacare. The Peoples World newspaper reports: Californias Secretary of State Debra Bowen is designating the states new Health Benefit Exchange, Covered California, as a voter registration agency under the National Voter Registration Act. That means Covered California will be incorporating voter registration into every transaction online, in-person and by phone it has with consumers. It seems as if some Obama supporters have found a new way to fill the void left by the bankruptcy of ACORN, the notorious left-wing voter-registration group that saw dozens of its employees in multiple states convicted of fraud.
