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HealthCare.gov Portal Suffers Data Breach Exposing 75,000 Customers (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Sensitive information belonging to roughly 75,000 individuals was exposed after a government healthcare sign-up system got hacked, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said on Friday. The agency said that "anomalous system activity" was detected last week in the Direct Enrollment system, which Americans use to enroll in healthcare plans via the insurance exchange established under the Affordable Care Act -- also known as Obamacare. A breach was declared on Wednesday. It's unclear why the agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, chose to not announce the incident sooner. Officials said the hacked portal is used by insurance agents and brokers to help Americans sign up for coverage and that no other systems were involved. The affected system has been disabled. CMS said it hoped to restore it before the end of next week. "I want to make clear to the public that HealthCare.gov and the Marketplace Call Center are still available, and open enrollment will not be negatively impacted," CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. "We are working to identify the individuals potentially impacted as quickly as possible so that we can notify them and provide resources such as credit protection."
Seriously, I'd like to know who doesn't have my personal information at this point. Likely be a short list.
> Trading across state lines won't help, it becomes a race to the bottom
Exactly. That's why each state has to have separate car companies, separate food companies, separate smartphone manufacturers - and separate insurance companies.
If you let people in Oregon buy a phone made in California, or a truck made in Texas, or fruit grown in Florida, you know it'll be garbage.
I say people should only be allowed to do business with companies in the same state, to avoid this race to the bottom. The fabulous success of this policy for health insurance demonstrates why we should do the same thing for all products and services.
That name was dreamt up to play on the fears of Republican voters, including the suggestion that it would have "death panels". A survey early last year showed 35% of respondents still didn't realize "Obamacare" was the same thing as the ACA. We need to make decisions rationally, not out of fear.
For instance, you're more likely to be killed by pollution (200,000 early deaths per year) than an undocumented immigrant (750 per year). However, our administration wants to spend money building a wall to protect you from the "dangerous" Mexicans, but doesn't mention anything about how many people die from pollution when announcing cuts to emissions standards.
(The 750 number is 456 arrests per year, plus an estimated correction factor due to cases not being solved.)
should only be surprised that it took this long for this sort of steaming pile to be breached. Or in a way that left enough breadcrumbs for someone to notice, anyway.
We already have health insurance companies selling across state lines. I can start a health insurance company in Alaska, and sell health insurance in Florida.
The only caveat is that I have to comply to Florida law for the insurance policies I sell in that state.
What Republicans want to do is make it so I can set up shop in Alaska and sell insurance policies to Florida that comply with Alaskan law. And this is where we have already seen a race to the bottom in another field: Credit cards.
Until a few decades ago, most states capped interest rates. Along came the Supreme Court and said that for credit cards, the state law where the company is based applies, not the state law where the credit card holder is. This turned Sioux Falls into a major base of operation for credit card companies, since South Dakota, unlike most states at the time, did not have a limit on interest rates.
I see no reason why health insurance shouldn't expect to see a similar race to the bottom if they no longer have to follow the state law where the policy holders are based.
So, approximately all of them ...