OPINION:
Obamacare requires every visit to a doctor, every diagnosis, every X-ray and every prescription to be recorded and kept electronically. The federal government can then keep tabs on everyone’s medical care. It’s sensitive stuff, and government bureaucrats have no idea how to keep it safe.
The administration admitted last week that a hacker breezed through the defenses of the Healthcare.gov website and installed malicious software, apparently to lay the groundwork for retrieving health insurance information from the repository.
The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services had solemnly assured everyone that the billion-dollar Obamacare repository was impenetrable. Now we learn that it is about as impenetrable as the hull and watertight compartments of the unsinkable Titanic.
The bureaucrats managing the Obamacare repository are clearly out of their depth. Rather than admit the folly of centralizing everyone’s personal health care data in a single online repository, they pressed forward, outsourcing website construction and security to companies like CGI, Optum/QSSI and other contractors. This made everyone at the office feel important, imposing unrealistic and shifting goals.
Obamacare was going “live,” ready or not. It wasn’t ready, and it still isn’t.
Andy Slavitt, then an executive of QSSI, scoffed at the idea last year that there was a threat to the security of Obamacare information, and defended his company’s protection of users’ information in testimony to Congress. Now Mr. Slavitt is back, this time as an official of the Health and Human Services Department, struggling to answer questions about the security breaches he previously scoffed at.
A new report by the Government Accountability Office concludes that security weaknesses are, in fact, putting “the sensitive personal information” at risk because officials didn’t perform the comprehensive security testing that would have been necessary and routine in a project of such scope built by a private company. But such security precautions would have slowed President Obama’s train en route to the wreck, so he decreed no delays, open the throttle. Underlings warned their superiors of moving so hastily, but nobody listened.
The House committees with jurisdiction over the fiasco want to know the extent of the damage to the Social Security numbers, addresses, income, employment and tax records of enrollees. “It is extremely important that [the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] and the other federal agencies involved in the exchanges properly protect and maintain this sensitive information,” the Republican leaders wrote in a letter to the administration. “However, [the] GAO report and the recent hacking of HealthCare.gov indicate that [the center] is failing to perform this fundamental obligation.” The letter was signed by Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee; Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee; and Rep. Darrell E. Issa of California, chairman of the House Oversight Committee. Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, among others, signed the letter, too.
These congressmen say not enough was done in advance of the upcoming open-enrollment period. Thousands are forced to sign up under threat of a substantial financial penalty — up to $2,085 by 2016. They’re entering personal information onto online forms that could be going into the hands of identity thieves, Chinese hackers or even the teenage boy next door. The government has no idea of who has access to the most inept, one-size-fits-all centralized, bureaucratic scheme this side of the Third World.
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