Tag Archives: health care

The Judicial Branch and the Law

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In a couple of weeks, the Supreme Court will hear a case involving Federal subsidies to health coverage purchasers who bought their plans on ObamaMart instead of State exchanges. The Obamacare law limits those subsidies to purchasers via State exchanges argue the plaintiffs; the government demurs.

Some ACA critics fear the Supreme Court may hesitate to block the current subsidies because of a lack of confidence in the legislative branch in general.

Against that backdrop, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said

The current Congress is not equipped really to do anything[.]

That claim is the pseudo-logic President Barack Obama uses to justify his Executive Orders and “executive actions” that deliberately bypass Congress, and unconstitutionally so.

Justice Ginsburg, and others of like mind on the Supreme Court, may be entirely right on Congress’ ability—or willingness—to act. However, she, and they, would do well to remember that the Constitution they’re sworn to uphold does not authorize the Court to legislate in place of, or in addition to, Congress.

Justice Ginsburg and her fellows would do well to remember that the judiciary’s task is first to determine whether a law comports with the Constitution as the Constitution is written, and if it’s legitimate, to apply that law as that law is written.

Full stop.

Democrats and Those Pesky Laws

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Three senior House members told The Associated Press that they plan to strongly urge the administration to grant a special sign-up opportunity for uninsured taxpayers who will be facing fines under the law for the first time this year.

The three are Michigan’s Sander Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, and Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, and Lloyd Doggett of Texas. All worked to help steer Obama’s law through rancorous congressional debates from 2009-2010.

Because, voters. Because, law? That’s too inconvenient; just ignore it.

The Obamacare law—which Democrats have been trying to stifle debate about by insisting “It’s the law of the land”—specified the signup period. If these worthies want to change the signup period, they need to change the law—which they helped write this way—not ignore it.

The lawmakers say they are concerned that many of their constituents will find out about the penalties after it’s already too late for them to sign up for coverage, since open enrollment ended Sunday.

Wait, what? These Democrats haven’t been talking to their constituents about their responsibilities under these Democrats’ law? Not since 2010? At all!?

Oh, yeah. Voters.

Personal Data Encryption vs Convenience

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It appears Anthem Inc may have made a poor decision.

Recall that Anthem, the health insurer, got hacked a few days ago, giving up Social Security numbers and other personal data for 80 million customers to those hackers. It turns out that Anthem had deliberately chosen not to encrypt those data. At all.

Scrambling the data, which included addresses and phone numbers, could have made it less valuable to hackers or harder to access in bulk. It also would have made it harder for Anthem employees to track health care trends or share data with states and health providers[.]

Apparently, the company considered convenience more important than the sanctity of the personal data which those 80 million victims had entrusted to Anthem.

Naturally, Kristin Binns, Anthem’s Vice President of Public Relations, as cited by The Wall Street Journal, is excusing the failure:

Anthem encrypts personal data when it moves in or out of its database but not when it is stored, which is common in the industry.

Everybody does it, therefor it’s OK. No, Madam, everybody doing it just makes the failure widespread.

She added

We use other measures, including elevated user credentials, to limit access to the data when it is residing in a database[.]

Plainly inadequate measures. Your IT department could have told you that. If they did not, that omission would seem grounds for their termination. If they did, and senior Anthem management chose to ignore them, that would seem grounds for termination of senior management.

Because, Veterans

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President Obama’s 2016 budget blueprint proposes rolling back a program that gives veterans the right to receive faster care outside of the long waitlists at the troubled Veterans Affairs medical system.

Obama signed the Veterans Choice Program into law in August following months of partisan wrangling on Capitol Hill….

His 2016 budget “proposal” doesn’t zero out the program; instead, it achieves elimination of the funding by allowing the VA to reallocate that part of its budget to other purposes

to support essential investments in VA system priorities in a fiscally responsible, budget-neutral manner.

Apparently, veteran choice isn’t an essential investment, or it’s not a fiscally responsible use of the money, or both.

Because veterans are another group of Americans whom Obama and his Democrat minions don’t think are capable of making their own decisions.

On the other hand, it was a Republican addition to last year’s compromise and interim bill for reforming the Veterans Administration. Maybe because, Republicans.

Another Reason

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…not to do business through ObamaMart and to get rid of Obamacare and with it ObamaMart. Even the AP has the tale.

When you apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, dozens of data companies may be able to tell that you are on the site. Some can even glean details such as your age, income, ZIP code, whether you smoke or if you are pregnant.

The data firms have embedded connections on the government site. Ever-evolving technology allows for individual Internet users to be tracked, building profiles that are a vital tool for advertisers.

Connections to multiple third-party tech firms were documented by technology experts who analyzed HealthCare.gov….

Additionally, former Chief Information Officer for President George Bush the Younger and current corporate cybersecurity consultant Theresa Payton was cited by the AP as saying

[T]he large number of outside connections on HealthCare.gov seems like “overkill” and makes it “kind of an outlier” among government websites.

It’s hard, too, to look past the idea that the ObamaMart designers from Kathleen Sebelius on down didn’t know this was a player at the time they chose not to put any security protections into the thing.