Buried In the Healthcare.gov Source: "No Expectation of Privacy"

realized writes "The Obamacare website Healthcare.gov has a hidden terms of service that is not shown to people when they sign up. The hidden terms, only viewable if you 'view source' on the site, says that the user has 'no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data transiting or stored on this information system.' Sadly, the taxpayer-funded website still does not work for most people, so it's hard to confirm – though when it's fixed in two months, we should finally be able to see it." Note: As the article points out, that phrasing is "not visible to users and obviously not intended as part of the terms and conditions." So users shouldn't worry that they've actually, accidentally agreed to any terms more onerous than the ones they can read on the signup page, but it's an interesting inclusion. What's the last EULA you read thoroughly?

Comments

How do we get Congress to sign up?

[WillAdams]

I want legislation limiting their healthcare and other benefits to those which are available to the general public.

Re:How do we get Congress to sign up?

[mjr167]

Not only that, vote against anyone with a R or D by their name

Re:How do we get Congress to sign up?

[SJHillman]

It's kind of misleading to say "nobody else is". I know plenty of people who have already had their plans canceled or changed as a direct result of Obamacare; many more have already been warned of sharp premium increases by their insurance company due to Obamacare requirements, which may force some people to cancel plans they can no longer afford.

Re:How do we get Congress to sign up?

[Salgak1]

I'd like a few things FOR Congress. Tar and Feathers come to mind, for starters. . . .

Re: How do we get Congress to sign up?

[fahrbot-bot]

Insurance is, by definition, payment to mitigate risk. If one has the ability to back up that risk, as the 1% do, it is on average better to not get insurance.

This may be a good strategy for some (most?) types of insurance, like the rental car collision damage insurance you mentioned, but perhaps not for health insurance. Some health care costs can be quite high, far exceeding the price of the premiums, and having/using insurance can get you a much better rate on most of that, lowering your total expense.

For example, my wife died of a brain tumor (Glioblastoma Multiforme) in 2006. The list (non-insurance) price for her chemotherapy medicine, Temodar was $11,000 (not a typo) for a one-month supply (one bottle of pills); her HMO co-pay was $40 (forty) - my BC/BS co-pay would have been 10%. She would have needed 4 months, had she lived longer.

The list price for the treatment she actually received in the 7 weeks from diagnosis to death was about $300,000, but I only paid about $500 - her premiums were far less than the list price of her treatment.

Re:How do we get Congress to sign up?

[Dishevel]

Obama did not write it. He has no idea what is in it.

Congress had to pass it before they could figure out what it meant. This was written by lobbyists and bureaucrats each piece designed to make money for some individual company with no regard to what it means on the whole.

Every congress critter that votes on any piece of legislation that they do not understand should be thrown of of their position. After they are raped and killed. Any law that can not be understood by someone without a law degree in 20 minutes should be null and void. Complicated laws are always wrong.

And fuck every piece of shit that has said "Their ought to be a law" in the last 50 years.

Re:How do we get Congress to sign up?

[Bartles]

I buy excellent individual insurance now. My application to enroll on the exchange was just rejected, and I was told I need to enroll in medicaid, because my income is too low at 174% of the poverty line. I just got some quotes for insurance purchased off the exchange and my cost will increas 300%-500%, making buying insurance impossible for me to afford. So everyone is not going to be paying taxes into that. In fact I just got moved from the taxpayer to the dependent category. This law will be a disaster.

Re:How do we get Congress to sign up?

[LordLimecat]

Obama signed it. Its his constitutional responsibility to know whats in it.

Sorry, Im not buying that he rallied for it and signed it but had no idea what was in it.

Cut & Paste

[wherley]

This is boilerplate language from many Federal sites and would seem to be a template cut/paste thing. Examples:

https://logonsm.faa.gov/dotrso/certoptional/myfaa/

https://ampedc1.cms.gov/amserver/UI/Login

http://hsesacpt21.smdi.com/jsso/SSOLogin

https://fedstar.phmsa.dot.gov/FedSTAR/Default.aspx

etc.

Its *not* $634M

[dieswaytoofast]

Even the source link points out that its not $634M (except, since it does so in a "Fair and Balanced" way, you can't really tell)
You can either actually read the article in gory detail, or better yet, go read this breakdown of the numbers.
TL;DR --> its around $55.7M (which is still a lot, but is - decidedly - not $634M)

let me translate that

[slashmydots]

"no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data transiting or stored on this information system" translated into HIPAA means "lol this website is completely illegal."

Re:Sooo...

[drjoe1e6]

"Upon being pushed from an american vagina you have absolutely no expectation of privacy or actual security"

My kids were born via Cesarian, you insensitive clod!

designed to obfuscate actual prices of plans

[bigpat]

Interesting Forbes article on how healthcare.gov is designed to prevent people to see the full prices of the healthcare plans which is what is causing the upfront bottleneck. On the one hand it makes sense that you don't want to scare people off with high healthcare insurance prices until you know if they are eligible for subsidies, but on the other hand it means you probably have to verify the data entered against what are potentially hundreds of millions of records just to display a screen with prices for the plans.

Seems a better option would simply to take the persons word for it up front, let them see the prices displayed depending on the personal and family information they entered and then only do the background verification after they "checkout" and actually purchase a plan. That way they just get an email later on if there is a problem with anything they entered or if the prices change based on something determined based on the background check and credit check. Or if as news reports suggest they are going to have to go through an income verification process as part of the Senate compromise, then doing the credit check up front in "real time" is an extra step anyway. Could even make the insurance companies do the final eligibility check as part of their 15% commission.

Trying to process through hundreds of millions of records in less than tens of seconds is a stupid thing to try to do just to keep people from finding out what your prices really are even if you have hundreds of millions of dollars to blow through. They could have fully insured 100,000 more people for the money that has been wasted just on healthcare.gov.