Move over NSA, here comes the Obamacare Big Brother database | Rare.
Would you trust thousands of low-level Federal bureaucrats and contractors with one-touch access to your private financial and medical information? Under Obamacare you won’t have any choice.
Actually you might. If you’re willing to forgo the government subsidy or you aren’t subsidy eligible then you can avoid the exchange and the data hub. I suspect your information could still be pulled up by the data hub but there are a lot others more at risk. Of course, that IS assuming the data hub is used for it’s intended purpose.
Also, not well noted in this article, is the data hub will only have your data for a very short time. It is accessing data from other agencies and not building it’s own database… or atl east so they say.
However, of legitimate concern is who will be accessing the data hub and typing the keystrokes to call up your personal information and seeing the results?
However, the hacker threat is the least of the Data Hub worries. The hub will be used on a daily basis by so-called Navigators, which according to the GAO are “community and consumer-focused nonprofit groups, to which exchanges award grants to provide fair and impartial public education” and “refer consumers as appropriate for further assistance.” Thousands of such people will have unfettered access to the Data Hub, but there are only sketchy guidelines on how they will be hired, trained and monitored. Given the slap-dash, incoherent way Obamacare is being implemented the prospect for quality control is low. And the Obama administration’s track record of sweetheart deals, no-bid, sole-source contracting and other means of rewarding people with insider access means the Data Hub will be firmly in the hands of trusted White House loyalists.
So if you think the IRS targeting Tea Party groups was bad, just wait for the Obamacare Navigators to be unleashed. “Trust us,” the administration says, no one will abuse the Data Hub. Sure, because that has worked out so well in the past.
These days, I don’t know how that can’t be called “worrisome”.
