I am so fortunate that I have health care provided by my employer.
We all have heard the troubles that the healthcare.gov website has had with uptime and stability. However, what hasn’t really been discussed is the site’s poor security.
The data obtained by Healthcare.gov is one of the largest collections of personal information ever assembled. It links information between seven different federal agencies and state agencies and government contractors.
The website requires users to provide personal information like birth dates, social security numbers, and household incomes in order to obtain information about potential health coverage. But security experts have expressed concern about flaws in the site that put this personal data at risk and subject users to the threat of identity theft.
One of our witnesses, David Kennedy, is a “white hat hacker,” who is hired by companies around the world to test the security of their online systems by essentially hacking their websites. During the hearing, Mr. Kennedy gave a demonstration of the healthcare.gov website’s vulnerabilities showing in real-time that hackers can access personal information on the website. It’s clear that not only is the website vulnerable, it’s under attack.
When asked whether he believed the website had already been compromised by hackers, Mr. Kennedy testified that he believed the website has either already been hacked or soon will be.
The massive amount of personal information collected by the Healthcare.gov website creates a tempting target for scam artists. Identity theft jeopardizes credit ratings and personal finances.
Source: EXCLUSIVE — MR. PRESIDENT, TEAR DOWN THIS WEBSITE
Additionally, aside from the technological problems, the navigators, which are there to help the public navigate the site, have not received background checks and yet have access to thousands of people’s private health records.
The Obamacare legislation is absolutely horrendous. Giving all this information to the government is irresponsible. If I did not have health insurance already, I would rather pay the fine than surrender personal information voluntarily to the government. I would at least want multiple non-government independent auditors to verify the security of the site as well as provide transparency on who has viewed my information. Hospitals are required to have records of the time and people that access medical records…why shouldn’t the government be held to the same standards?
Obama’s presidency so far seems constructed to pave the way to a totalitarian system. The ultimate goal is total reliance on the government from everything from health care to what we should be teaching our children. If we don’t make the transition back to smaller government, history will look back on the Obama presidency as the beginning of the decline of American supremacy. (Full disclosure, I feel that the last few Presidents, including GWB contributed to the problem by increasing debt but just not as quickly or to the level that Obama has forced.)
Somewhere there are socialists in their graves laughing as the United States tries her hand at centralized planning. You’d think that with nearly the entire 20th century being a showcase of failed communist states, we’d learn. Obama and the democrats must not have studied history or paid attention the day they were supposed to read Orwell’s 1984.
As George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
43.060363-88.02709