Open enrollment is just around the corner for health insurance nationwide and particularly ObamaCare. Those considering buying insurance through www.heatlhcare.gov ought to think again as we’re learning that the website is still vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks despite past attacks and warnings.
The Inspector General (IG) at Health and Human Services released a report of Healthcare.gov’s vulnerabilities and security shortcomings noting that the federal exchange website suffers from a number of security issues. The report found 135 database vulnerabilities, such as software bugs, the majority of which were classified as high or medium risk. One major risk identified was that the site does not encrypt user sessions, which apparently is a common practice for most online financial transactions. Encryption helps to insure that the information within a website session or visit is not compromised.
What’s at risk are names, social security numbers, passport numbers, financial and employment information, and other highly sensitive information that ObamaCare customers submit to verify immigration and financial status. This information of 10 million customers is stored indefinitely in a vulnerable $110-million database called MIDAS. Apropos because, what’s entered there becomes a hacker’s pot of gold.
The Hill reports:
"It sounds like a gold mine for ID thieves," said Jeremy Gillula, staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group focused on technology. "I'm kind of surprised that this information was never compromised."
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MIDAS is an internal system operated by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that administers the health care law. The acronym stands for Multidimensional Insurance Data Analytics System. Officials say it's an electronic backbone, essential to the smooth operation of the health care law's insurance markets
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Before HealthCare.gov went live in 2013, Obama administration officials assured Congress and the public that individuals' information would be used mainly to determine eligibility for coverage, and that the government intended to store the minimum amount of personal data possible. Things don't seem to have turned out that way.
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In a written response to the audit, Medicare administrator Andy Slavitt said that "the privacy and security and security of consumers' personally identifiable information are a top priority" for his agency. Slavitt said all of the high vulnerabilities were addressed within a week of being identified, and that all of the IG's recommendations have been fully implemented.
Today’s ObamaCare headline is yet another example of big government’s failure to protect the sensitive information it collects in massive repositories from attacks. OPM is another big culprit as we report today.
Healthcare.gov came under months of intense –and well-deserved- criticism when it launched, broke, and remained riddled with significant issues for months. The website was not ready for use when it was rammed through development phases and made public without the development of front-end and back-end applications that protect customers’ information, securely transfers data to insurance providers, and provides a good user experience.
The best way to sum up this failure on the part of the Administration is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Some of the problem is leadership, but some of it is an entrenched culture in bloated federal agencies that are ill-equipped for the massive projects that politicians go after. The Affordable Care Act is President Obama’s legacy, but he and the architects of this behemoth insurance plan were far from equipped to plan all of these aspects – nor were the bureaucrats tasked with implementing it.
The technical issues with the Healthcare.gov website is still only just a scratch on the surface of the problems with ObamaCare and the long-term hardship inflicted on our economy and nation. Even if the website worked, ObamaCare would still be failing at its supposed missions of making healthcare more affordable and accessible. One can't help but wonder, what was the point of this law exactly?