US Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card

According to Wired (and no big surprise, considering the practicalities of implementing massive changes in medical finance), US lawmakers "are proposing a national identification card, a 'fraud-proof' Social Security card required for lawful employment in the United States. The proposal comes as the Department of Homeland Security is moving toward nationalizing driver licenses."

Comments

And what's the problem here?

[LostCluster]

I'm not sure why Slashdot is so afraid of this. You don't have a right to be anonymous to your employer. You don't have a right to avoid taxes. You just got the right to healthcare, but do you really want that going to illegal immigrants? We already drive around with standardized (yet customizable non-materially) license plates on our cars. You already need proof of government permission and proof somebody's going to pay if you hit something to drive a car. You aren't supposed to be able to get on a plane anonymously...

Let's not think of the things we'd be able to get away with with a fake id... and start thinking how we can make sure somebody else can't fake their ID for our mutual protection.

Re:And what's the problem here?

[LostCluster]

American health insurers make it very clear that the only service they'll provide for you in Canada is medical transport back to the USA. They won't pay the out-of-country rate for Canadian healthcare.

Re:And what's the problem here?

[AHuxley]

5) Give them access so they don't infect their bosses?
Disposable, skilled, interchangeable, union free, tax paying low cost labor does come with a few basic maintenance costs.
But the costs are picked up by the state and per visit payments are injected back into the private hospital system?
The other options are robots or a guest worker system.
Robots are expensive and need US techs to service and certify.
Guest workers are less disposable, interchangeable and tend to have rights, protections and real contracts.
On paper the system you have now is the win for the US elite.
If you have a job and no ID your out of view, if you get caught without papers whats the ID card going to do?
The only reason you want an ID card is to track the mainstream US population.
If the US gov wanted to deal with the 'human slavery" side - treat the bosses like drug dealers, you lose it all in forfeiture cases.
As this is not happening, its all ok :)

Re:And what's the problem here?

[Grishnakh]

It seems like a big part of the problem is expecting insurance to pay for everything health-related. This leads to a giant amount of overhead, which just adds to the cost of health care.

I don't file a claim with my auto insurance company every time I need to change the oil, get a car wash, get new tires, or replace a broken CV axle. I pay for it myself, and it's cheap (actually, dirt cheap because I do it myself). So why should I have some giant insurance company that I have to go through every time I visit a doctor for an annual check-up or an ingrown toenail or whatever?

Yes, I can't afford hundreds of thousands in medical bills. Similarly, I can't afford to pay the damages if I wreck my car and someone gets hurt. That's why I have auto insurance, to pay in case I do have a car wreck. That almost never happens, so my only communication with my auto insurer is my bill and policy renewals.

Why do we insist on having insurance companies pay for all our medical issues, which we then have to pay them for? This is all just make-work: huge companies that do nothing but process paperwork and shuffle money, taking some of it for themselves, and providing little value in the process (actually, they provide negative value in most cases).

What we need is catastrophic insurance, to pay for those things which don't happen often, and cost a fortune. Things like cancer, ER treatment, medivac helicopter rides when you're in a car wreck, heart surgery when you have a heart attack, etc. Then regular doctors' visits should be paid some other way, either out-of-pocket, or perhaps with socialized healthcare (paid directly by the government, not with a for-profit corporation acting as a middleman). Of course, the existing insurance companies wouldn't like that, because they're making tons of money by acting as a useless middleman, and their lobbyists are sure to "convince" Congresspeople of how important they are in any health care "reform" bills.

Government can be effective

[Spy Handler]

Unfortunately, being the U.S. Government, they will no doubt pull the same sort of stupidity

Nothing is fraud-proof. Nothing is bullet-proof either. However you can make something bullet-resistant. How resistant is commensurate with the amount of effort you put into it.

People love saying government is stupid and can never do anything right, but that's not true with everything. Currency is one example: there is enough political will and a real-world need to prevent counterfeiting (fraud). Government puts a good deal of effort into preventing counterfeiting, and the penalty is quite harsh and is well-enforced. While not 100% fraud-proof, they have done a pretty good job. I have not had a problem with being given counterfeit money recently, and I don't know of anyone who has.

Re:Still think Obamacare is a good idea?

[Chris Burke]

What, you think this National ID card idea spontaneously appeared when the health care bill was passed? LOL, haven't payed much attention for the last, um, forever, have you?

The Powers That Be are always looking for a reason to push a national ID card. After 9/11 there was a big push for it, and regularly ever since, but it was defeated because even at our most paranoid and batshit crazy we knew better than to let such a thing pass. Just like this proposal will go nowhere as well.

Look, you want to stop Obamacare from resulting in a National ID card? It's easy:

Stop caring that an illegal might receive medical treatment, just like you're going to have to learn to stop caring that a poor person will receive medical treatment. The only way the ID card has gotten any traction is as a way to stop illegals from receiving benefits, i.e. as a result of the same people who are against health care reform.

And if you're confused as to how treating illegal immigrants will fail to bankrupt us, it's the same as with poor people: They already are receiving treatment, but at the ER, not at a regular doctor.

It's an interesting question

[starseeker]

As the technology to collect and manage information becomes ever more inexpensive, it becomes more and more of an effort to AVOID having data available to the government in such a way that it can be abused. When things get to the point where the drivers-license level data for every person in the USA can be causally tossed onto a thumb drive and taken to the next meeting, it becomes VERY hard to NOT use that data.

Well intentioned uses of such data abound, and some will be not only well intentioned but actually helpful (it is quite probable, for example, that correct use of a national DNA database WOULD allow many crimes to be solved that are not currently solved, just as fingerprint databases have been so useful.) Abuse of this data (particularly if the correctness of the data is trusted too much) by those in power is the counterpoint, and that is equally real (and equally scary). The problem is, the easier it gets to collect data the harder it is to be SURE it's thrown away if its intended to be thrown away. From some of the stores Slashdot has run about Britain, once they get ahold of your DNA they hang onto it, period. From their point of view, it might be useful in the future and its harmless sitting there in a database if its never used. If the agents of the system and those making the laws could be fully trusted, this might even be true. The problem is neither requirement holds. Law enforcement isn't perfect, and laws aren't either.

The balance of society is between empowering enforcers of the law to catch criminals and limiting the damage they can do when those enforcers go astray. My guess is given technological trends, the balance in the information game is going to have to shift from restriction of available information to stronger punishment for misuse and weaker assumptions about the automatic correctness of any personal info database. It's going to become too easy to collect too much information, and once collected it's very hard to uncollect it. Eventually, things will reach the point where a desire to NOT have your information on record will be an automatic flag, kinda like how the fuzzy areas on Google Maps are an automatic flag of "hey, there might be something interesting there." No idea were all this will lead, but I have a feeling technology will compel us to find out.

One though that might be worth thinking about - if there has to be a national database of all this stuff, have it widely distributed and copied at many locations, so that it's extremely difficult to push a universal change through any mechanism except one that makes records of the change (sort of a subversion database for law enforcement records - no anonymous changes and every change logged, as well as all historical database states being preserved. If records are ever changed erroneously, make it extremely difficult to do this without it being clear WHO did it)