Tag Archives: privacy

More on ObamaMart

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HealthCare.gov thinks it’s made an improvement: now we can browse—sort of—some notional health “insurance” plans and their notional premiums.  The images below (because the technology is smarter than I am, so I can’t meld them into the single image that exists at HealthCare.gov/how-much-will-marketplace-insurance-cost/) show just how meaningless this “improvement” is.

And

As you can see, the ObamaMart still is withholding any sort of idea of actual costs—explicitly, you don’t get to see deductibles and copays, and you only get to see “premiums” for two age groups—which lump together too many characteristics for these made-up numbers to be taken seriously.

We still have to give our personally identifying information to the ObamaMart doorman, we still have to open an “account” before we can get into the store and poke the shelves.

The IRS knows how to do tables of options based on income.  Adding options based on health conditions—the major factors, like heart disease history, smoking, weight vs height, and so on—for the five plan categories would make a table bigger, perhaps more complex (it might even—the horror!—require more than one table), but it’s eminently doable.  And Americans aren’t as dumb as the Progressives in the White House and HHS think—we can keep up with such a table or set of tables.

This page of notions is just mendacious.

A Failure from Not Bothering with Checking Backgrounds

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We have the Obama administration’s decision not to bother with serious background checks on its…navigators…who will be collecting all of our personal financial and medical data as they “help” us choose an Obamacare “insurance” policy.

Now we have another outcome of that administration decision.  Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s home was trespassed against by one of these attackers and a crowd of her cronies.

Veronica Miranda…appeared with “four busloads of her friends” at [Kobach’s] home near Kansas City in June.

“She was more than trespassing,” [Kobach] said.  “She was attempting to intimidate a public official.”

Privacy and Validity

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Eric Boehm, in a recent Watchdog.org post, noted some concerns about Obamacare.

Thanks to new regulations that are part of the federal Affordable Care Act, patients will be asked to disclose more personal information to their doctors—including how often they have sex and how with how many sexual partners.

And once they do, it won’t really be personal information any more.

Similar questions exist for drug use history, and the questions are required of all doctors, from your dermatologist or osteopath to your GP—regardless of the questions’ relevance to the health problem that brought you to the doctor.

On top of that, as Goldwater Institute lawyer, Christina Sandefur, says,

Once you’ve shared your information with a private third party, the Supreme Court has ruled that is fair game for the government[.]

Apocalyptic?  Likely (the Supremes’ rulings on the related matters didn’t exactly say that), but it can’t be casually discounted.  Additionally,

Doctors and hospitals who refuse to participate could be cut off from some federal funds, and individuals who decline to share sensitive information may have to pay the fines…outlined in the federal health care law.

Regardless of the validity of the concerns in Boehm’s column, people—and doctors—will react to those concerns.  Which raises this set of questions:

What will be the validity of the data collected?  At what rate will patients, to protect their privacy while satisfying (their perception of) the letter of the law, falsify their data—deny drug use to their dermatologist, make up answers to questions about their sex lives?  How will the government reconcile patient-provided data that conflict from their dermatologist to their cardiologist to their GP?

Another Government Takeover of an Industry

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…and for what purpose?

The US government has used the merger-approval process to increase its influence over the telecom industry, bringing more companies under its oversight and gaining a say over activities as fundamental as equipment purchases.

The leverage has come from a series of increasingly restrictive security agreements between telecom companies and national-security agencies….

And

The security agreements…compel [telecom companies] to honor requests to access their systems.  What’s new is that consolidation in the industry and an influx of overseas investment have left much of the industry under the government’s sway.

Thus,

Three of the top four wireless carriers now operate under such agreements….

Three of the major equipment suppliers have come under these agreements in recent years as well.

What requests?

The deals routinely require the companies to give the government streamlined access to their networks.  At their most restrictive, they grant officials the right to require firms to remove certain gear and approve equipment purchases and directors.

And

when T-Mobile and MetroPCS sought approval for their merger this year…the US secured 30 days’ notice before the company uses a new vendor for network equipment, and T-Mobile agreed to resolve any security concerns the government raises relating to new equipment providers, according to a 2013 amendment to the 2001 security agreement.

All of this comes under the mirage of trading freedom for security.

Makes me wonder what the government isn’t telling us about why they blocked the AT&T-T-Mobile merger a couple years ago.

I Wonder

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…whether this might be doable in the US.  An English gentleman has a solution to those annoying cold calls from someone, or some robot, wanting to pitch you this or collect your personal information for that.

A man annoyed by cold callers has turned the tables by setting up his own premium rate number which earns him money.

Lee Beaumont said he paid £10 plus VAT to set up his personal 0871 line in November 2011 and has made £300 from calls he has received since.

It certainly has had a useful effect from my perspective:

…fewer calls, falling from up to 30 per month last year to 16 so far this month.

Hmm….