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Chris Wysocki
Caldwell, NJ
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The implementors of Obamacare are building the biggest, most comprehensive, and intrusive database ever conceived. The Federal Data Services Hub sounds innocuous, its ostensible purpose is to help the new insurance exchanges determine eligibility for benefits, exemptions from the federal mandate, and how much to grant in federal insurance subsidies.
But the devil, as they say, is in the details. And when Congress asked HHS about those details, things got downright scary.
In response, the HHS said the ObamaCare data hub will "interact" with seven other federal agencies: Social Security Administration, the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, the Veterans Administration, Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Defense and — believe it or not — the Peace Corps. Plus the Hub will plug into state Medicaid databases.
And what sort of data will be "routed through" the Hub? Social Security numbers, income, family size, citizenship and immigration status, incarceration status, and enrollment status in other health plans, according to the HHS.
The Peace Corps huh? Don't they mean ObamaCorps, aka The Hitler Youth? Dear Leader's domestic force for progressivism is quietly getting bigger and bigger every year, insinuating itself into every nook and cranny of local government under the guise of "community service."
But don't worry, The Obama Administration promises "the hub will not store consumer information, but will securely transmit data between state and federal systems to verify consumer application information."
BZZZZZZT! Wrong-o buckeroo. Their regulatory filing tells quite a different tale.
That filing describes a new "system of records" that will store names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, taxpayer status, gender, ethnicity, email addresses, telephone numbers on the millions of people expected to apply for coverage at the ObamaCare exchanges, as well as "tax return information from the IRS, income information from the Social Security Administration, and financial information from other third-party sources."
They will also store data from businesses buying coverage through an exchange, including a "list of qualified employees and their tax ID numbers," and keep it all on file for 10 years.
In addition, the filing says the federal government can disclose this information "without the consent of the individual" to a wide range of people, including "agency contractors, consultants, or grantees" who "need to have access to the records" to help run ObamaCare, as well as law enforcement officials to "investigate potential fraud."
Instapundit puts it succinctly:
It absolutely, positively will be abused politically.
They'll have everything they need, all in one place, to punish their political enemies. Don't think it won't happen. The temptation will be too great. The data will leak out. Those "agency contractors and consultants" encompass a vast conglomeration of liberal advocacy groups under the banner of Obamacare Navigators.
It's ACORN-redux, except the database they'll be accessing knows more about you than you do. And the Obama Administration's record on privacy isn't exactly what anyone here would call "stellar." Not to mention their inability to distinguish between governing and campaigning.
Of course it'll probably be more subtle than that. At least at first.
Posted at 10:39 by Chris Wysocki
[/obamacare]
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