Obamacare - The Data Hub

The Affordable Healthcare Act is full of surprises. One of these is The Data Hub. This is a comprehensive database of personal information established by the Department of Health and Human Services, which has been charged with the task of implementing ‘Obamacare.’ In a Government Accountability report, the Data Hub is to provide “real-time access to federal data and third party access to sources needing to verify consumer eligibility.

Based on the current news of abuses of information by federal organizations, The IRS, The NSA and other agencies this is bound to make a reasonable thinking man/woman nervous.

This Data Hub would include our personal information such as income, financial data, family members, immigration status, incarceration status, our social security numbers and all of our private health information. These facts will be stored in dossiers. Sources of this data are coming from the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Social Security Administration, Medicare and Medicaid and the Peace Corp. Any eavesdropper or fraudster with hacking capability could access the confidential personal records of the entire United States of America.

The Department of Health and Human Services guarantees this data will be safe and secure. Yeah right!

The Data Hub will be used daily by ‘Navigators’, which according to the GAO are community and consumer nonprofit groups. The Navigators will let the citizens know which health exchanges award grants and provide impartial information to the lot of us. They will direct us to the appropriate agency for further assistance.

What does this mean? Thousands of Navigators will have unfettered access to the Data Hub, however there are currently no guidelines on what qualifications the should have, how they will be hired, trained and monitored. This is frightening and appears to be a violation of our personal privacy and civil rights.