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Accenture Comes Through For Healthcare.gov!

Accenture has come through -- with respect to our predictions I mean. It's a racket.

Barack Obama taking direction from health care industry
CEO's at the White House, Washington, DC.

When the Obama administration pushed through a no-bid contract award to put Accenture on the Obamacare contract, replacing the original Healthcare.gov IT contracter, CGI, we said this is how contract selection works -- contacts and influence, no merit.

In my experience, Accenture is one of the two or three most expensive of the gang of Beltway bandits. The firm hires former federal officials who worm their way back into agencies to roam the halls and glad hand, cajole and manipulate (or worse) contract awards from their former colleagues and subordinates. I saw it first hand when I worked at Postal Service Headquarters in DC, where Accenture's inside marketing lead was a former Deputy Postmaster General, the number two man in the agency (his masked, last nameless, LinkedIn profile is here), who had at one time or another been chief operating officer, chief financial officer and head of employee and labor relations. You or I would get an armed escort out of the building if we roamed around the grounds and into and out of offices the way that guy did, but among the portals of official Washington, DC he is courted with open arms.

As for what work the successor contract required, we noted that Accenture was being hired to confront and resolve back end/back office web site difficulties. Large parts of the platform had never been built.

Healthcare.gov does not track payments or allow the government
to calculate its subsidy payments accurately.

The back (financial) end of the website is not built, so the government not only doesn't know how many people have actually purchased insurance, it also cannot determine how much of your taxpayer subsidy money to forward to health insurance companies. Change management (like if you have a baby to add to a policy), opt out and cancellation processes are also not implemented. As the website stands now, you can sign up but cannot get out. I can't wait until we hear the stories about poor penniless survivors forced to continue to pay for a deceased loved one's health insurance. It's gonna happen.

The government said it was bringing in Accenture on a non-competitive basis because it wanted to be sure the work got done the right way, right now. Looking at Accenture's business model and track record, nuts to that we said.

Supposedly the new contractor will timely rectify website failures. But if you really think there will be something materially different or significantly improved now that Accenture will be managing the website code writing exercise, you may want to think again.

So to our surprise shock and dismay, here is the headline months later.

Price Tag for Healthcare.gov Repairs Jumps to $121 Million; 'Back End' Still a Mess

It can be embarrassing -- to be so right.

After shelling out $677 million to build the federal health care website, the government will spend an additional $121 million in 2014 to repair it—$30 million more than previously estimated—the Washington Times reported last night. This comes just as the Obama administration is starting the hunt for next year’s diverse group of contractors.

CGI Federal, the original lead contractor awarded $93.7 million, was replaced by Accenture this past January. Accenture received an initial payment of $45 million—an amount that was supposed to double by year’s end, according to the Washington Post. But yesterday, Accenture Federal Services announced their final agreement of $121 million for work through January 10, 2015.

Accenture is outstanding at doing one thing and one thing only -- collecting outrageous sums of money.

All that work that had to get done -- well, it did not.

This year, Accenture is tasked with repairs and additions such as “enhancing the back-end capabilities to improve user payments,” according to the Washington Times. The Hill reported in January that the “back end” had to be operational by mid-March, or “disaster” would ensue and the whole law could be “jeopardized.” In fact, that was the main reason Accenture was brought on board so hastily without a full bidding process, The Hill noted. 

But last Friday, Politico stated that the back end might not be completed by the summer, detailing what it called an “overlooked chapter” of Obamacare: 

Obama administration officials originally intended to have the major back-end components of HealthCare.gov working by the website’s launch in October….

The deadline for completing those pieces gave way to January and then to mid-March. Senior officials said early last month that they hoped to have the entire system ready by the summer. Now, even summer appears to be a question mark.

The government is clueless on what is going on with Obamacare financially. It is wasting money left and right. Pay no attention. Carry on. Good luck to all.

And the Sequester Had to End? That Is Insane!

The hue and cry from Dear President and his adherents was that they couldn't manage under the budget sequester.  It was cutting to the bone and beyond.  BS!  Lies! Look at it -- 65 percent waste, self-perpetuating bureaucracy, dysfunctional, and secret, autocratic and unaccountable. Here is what one of Obama's insider, true believers has to say as he walks out the door.

The director of the U.S. government office that monitors scientific misconduct in biomedical research has resigned after 2 years out of frustration with the “remarkably dysfunctional” federal bureaucracy. David Wright, director of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), writes in a scathing resignation letter obtained by ScienceInsider that the huge amount of time he spent trying to get things done made much of his time at ORI “the very worst job I have ever had.” 

**** 

It is actually worse than it looks.

David Wright writes that working with ORI’s “remarkable scientist-investigators” was “the best job I’ve ever had.” But that was only 35% of his job; the rest of the time he spent “navigating the remarkably dysfunctional HHS bureaucracy” to run ORI. Tasks that took a couple of days as a university administrator required weeks or months, he says. He writes that ORI’s budget was micromanaged by more senior officials, and that Koh’s office had a “seriously flawed” culture, calling it “secretive, autocratic and unaccountable.” For example, he told Wanda Jones, Koh’s deputy, that he urgently needed to appoint a director for ORI’s division of education. Jones told him the position was somewhere on a secret priority list of appointments. The position has not been filled 16 months later, David Wright notes. 

OASH itself suffers from the tendency of bureaucracies to “focus … on perpetuating themselves,” David Wright writes. Officials spent “exorbitant amounts of time” in meetings and generating data and reports to make their divisions look productive, he writes. He asks whether OASH is the proper home for a regulatory office such as ORI, noting that Koh himself has described his office as an “intensely political environment.”

A committed, competent, intelligent and fair minded President could get rid of half of the federal bureaucracy and the only differences we would note is the government would improve.  But you all blessed us with Dear President.  God help us all.

Oh! For you low information voters out there, HHS is the department that gives us Obamacare. Sweet.

Why Obamacare Doesn't Work

It's really not complicated.  This was highly predictable.

I have spoken with a number of generally healthy, hard working, responsible and uninsured individuals (or previously insured in the individual market) with moderate incomes who are not going to sign up. They sat down, worked out the numbers, and decided no. The community rated, mandated liberal math, that underlies the program, does not work for them. They will wait to sign up until they are sick, or reach an age or a state of health that raises their risk, to the point that signing up is financially feasible. 

This is a big fucking deal.

It's really a fraud to call Obamacare insurance because it is not insurance anymore. It is not even prepaid medical services. Rather, Obamacare is a program that institutionalizes and deeply ingrains an individual's right to pass along healthcare costs to others.

At one time or another, most of you have voted for this.  God help us all.

Obama Still Pushes the Myth

Post by Grady Foster.

New Obamacare Website Contractor (It's Your Turn)

The Obama administration is replacing the Obamacare website contractor. But it is taking the same contractor selection approach -- picking a contractor off of a federal government buddies list. No open competition, none. 

If the ObamaCare contractor brought on ..... to fix the back-end of the HealthCare.gov portal doesn’t finish the build-out by mid-March the healthcare law will be jeopardized, according to a procurement document posted on a federal website.

It says insurers could be bankrupt and the entire healthcare industry threatened if the build out is not completed.

The procurement document signed by healthcare officials in late December says that the government determined in mid-December that CGI Federal, the contractor originally tasked with connecting the online healthcare portal to insurers, is not up to the task.

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) announced .... it was firing CGI Federal, and bringing on Accenture to finish the website.

The document says officials realized in December that the need to bring on Accenture is so urgent that there is no time to go through the “full and open competition process” before awarding them with a $91 million contract.

“There is limited time to build this functionality and failure to deliver…by mid-March 2014 will result in financial harm to the government,” the document says.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/195851-document-obamacare-contractor-faces-mid#ixzz2tFnEzT4sFollow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

The back (financial) end of the website is not built, so the government not only doesn't know how many people have actually purchased insurance, it also cannot determine how much of your taxpayer subsidy money to forward to health insurance companies. Change management (like if you have a baby to add to a policy), opt out and cancellation processes are also not implemented. As the website stands now, you can sign up but cannot get out. I can't wait until we hear the stories about poor penniless survivors forced to continue to pay for a deceased loved one's health insurance. It's gonna happen.

Supposedly the new contractor will timely rectify website failures. But if you really think there will be something materially different or significantly improved now that Accenture will be managing the website code writing exercise, you may want to think again.

To review, we blogged last October on how Washington, DC operates in connection with the botched roll out of Obamacare. The IT contractor building Healthcare.Gov was CGI Federal in Sterling, Virginia, an operating division of Quebec based CGI . Our ("I'm not a lobbyist") neighbor across the street in Arlington, Nicholas Evans, is the Vice President of Government Relations (i.e., chief lobbyist) of CGI Federal and an aggressive fundraiser for the Democratic Party, including for the newly elected Virginia governor and former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe. Toni Townes-Whitley, Senior Vice President of CGI Federal, has line authority for the Obamacare portal contract. Ms. Whitely is class of 1985 Princeton classmate, political ally,and student association colleague of Michelle Obama. The Obamacare IT project was a no-bid contract, awarded to a politically (to the Democratic party) and personally (to the Obama's) connected contractor.

In my experience, Accenture is one of the two or three most expensive of the gang of Beltway bandits. The firm hires former federal officials who worm their way back into agencies to roam the halls and glad hand, cajole and manipulate (or worse) contract awards from their former colleagues and subordinates. I saw it first hand when I worked at Postal Service Headquarters in DC, where Accenture's inside marketing lead was a former Deputy Postmaster General, the number two man in the agency (his masked, last nameless, LinkedIn profile is here), who had at one time or another been chief operating officer, chief financial officer and head of employee and labor relations. You or I would get an armed escort out of the building if we roamed around the grounds and into and out of offices the way that guy did, but among the portals of official Washington, DC he is courted with open arms.

The Washington Post reported on the Postal Service's Inspector General's bleak assessment of Accenture's performance as a federal contractor.

The U.S. Postal Service Inspector General’s Office wrote in June that Accenture had “demonstrated an absence of business ethics” and said that the agency should consider terminating the firm’s more than $200 million in contracts. The office cited in part a 2011 settlement with the Justice Department in which Accenture paid $63 million to resolve alle­gations of what the government called “kickbacks” and “bid-rigging” in numerous federal contracts.

The Inspector General concluded,

Accenture’s involvement in several improper contracting practices creates an immediate risk of future fraud and abuse in Postal Service contracts. As a result of prior OIG audits and investigations, DOJ settlements, and the DCAA’s findings of inadequacies in the supplier’s cost-estimating and timekeeping systems, the supplier has demonstrated an absence of business ethics, a lack of transparency, and insufficient internal controls in its business dealings with the Postal Service. The Postal Service should consider Accenture for suspension or debarment and review existing contracts to determine whether the contracts warrant termination. This action would protect the Postal Service’s financial interest from unethical, dishonest, or otherwise irresponsible supplier practices. 

OIG is Office of Inspector General, DOJ is Department of Justice and DCAA is Defense Contract Audit Agency, which is the lead audit watchdog on most major government contracts. Everyone who is supposed to be protecting the government is speaking up here, but the government cannot be protected from the dunderhead politicians who oversee it, and the self-serving bureaucrats who operate it.

It should be no surprise that it is Accenture's turn now, for my former neighbor, a leader in the influence peddling scheme and political gamesmanship that earned CGI the initial Obamacare contract, learned his trade at Accenture.

Nicholas Evans

Vice President, U.S. Government Relations

Washington D.C. Metro Area

Government Relations

Current	CGI Federal
Previous	Accenture
Education	Harvard University Kennedy School of Government

500+connections

Send Nicholas InMail

• www.linkedin.com/pub/nicholas-evans/4/618/156

Background

Experience

Vice President, Government Relations

CGI Federal

2006 – Present (8 years)Fairfax, VA

Senior Manager

Accenture

2001 – 2006 (5 years)

Mr. Evans remains joined at the hip with his buddies at his former employer, co-leading the industry lobbying group.

Legislative Action Network

The Legislative Action Network (LAN) is the hub of PSC’s congressional advocacy efforts. The LAN is a forum for PSC members and staff to share emerging information about key legislative initiatives and to develop strategies for communicating our message on Capitol Hill, and serves as the focal point for PSC’s grassroots activity. More than just a discussion forum, the LAN convenes monthly and as necessary, both physically and virtually, to coordinate and amplify advocacy efforts on behalf of our industry.

Chairs:
Nicholas Evans, Vice President, CGI Federal
Nigel Stephens, Manager of Federal Government Affairs, Accenture

Pay no attention people. Carry on. All is well.

Government Can't Do It, Duh!

The Washington Post buried the damning Obamacare poll results in the last paragraph.

It [the Kaiser poll] found that a quarter of the uninsured had a favorable view of the law this month, while nearly twice as many held an unfavorable view. While the uninsured were negative overall about the law in December, they were less so then, with 36 percent of uninsured people offering a favorable assessment and 43 percent responding unfavorably.

Here is a full and transparent look at the poll results now that the website is supposedly fixed, comparing the last data point (Jan.) to the old days of the failing website, free of double and triple negatives, obfuscation and sad sack excuses.

Source: Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll

Those without health insurance, whom Obamacare was supposedly intended to help, are turning their backs on the monstrosity. Less than one out of four of the alleged beneficiaries have a favorable impression. As the uninsured have learned about the law, support has dropped over 60 percent (from 57 to 24). With all the promotion, education, navigating and speechifying, subsidized by billions of dollars of taxpayer support, as many as ever of the target audience don't know what to think about the spaghetti mess. Obamacare is an epic government failure.

Obamacare Lies Go Viral

The White House is grossly overstating (i.e., lying about) the number of people who have signed up for accounts as a result of Obamacare -- the Medicare component by possibly a factor of ten and private insurance by a yet undisclosed amount. The Barack Obama originated and perpetrated frauds continues.

The only question about this is why the horse manure that is spewed forth by Dear President, his political organization and his White House lackeys only gets three Pinocchio's from the Washington Post.

Look closely at this tweet by the @BarackObama account, maintained by the pro-Obama group Organizing for America. The 6 million figure comes from combining a figure of 2.1 million for people selecting a plan via state and federal exchanges, through December, and 3.9 million for Medicaid, through November. Thus the claim that “6 million Americans have already signed up for coverage thanks to health reform.”

There is much less to the Medicaid figure than meets the eye. (The exchange figure has been updated recently, to 2.2 million, but not the Medicaid figure.) Indeed, there has been vast confusion about what this figure means, especially in the news media. The Fact Checker cited the 3.9 million figure in a few recent columns, but prodded by a colleague as well as an interesting analysis by Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics, we decided to take a closer look. 

Bottom line: This number tells you almost nothing about how the Affordable Care Act is affecting Medicaid enrollment. Reporters need to stop using it.

So nice, the Washington Post looking our for other reporters. Wondering who is going to get fired for misleading the American people?  The answer to this, of course, is no one, for the political whores installed in the White House have no integrity whatsover. You get what you vote for and you vote for what you get.  Good luck to all. 

Think Your Employer Plan is Safe? More Cancellations Coming

So says the Washington Post,

When millions of health-insurance plans were canceled last fall, the Obama administration tried to be reassuring, saying the terminations affected only the small minority of Americans who bought individual policies.

Employer mandates are coming.

But according to industry analysts, insurers and state regulators, the disruption will be far greater, potentially affecting millions of people who receive insurance through small employers by the end of 2014. 

While some cancellation notices already have gone out, insurers say the bulk of the letters will be sent in October, shortly before the next open-enrollment period begins.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports on the high level and reliability of coverage for those whose health care has already been cancelled and replaced -- not.

FORT WORTH — Paul D. Donahue and his wife, Angela, are among more than a million Americans who have signed up for health coverage through the federal insurance exchange. Mr. Donahue has a card in his wallet from his insurer to prove it. But when he tried to use it to get a flu shot and fill prescriptions this week, local pharmacies could not confirm his coverage, so he left without his medications.
Similar problems are occurring daily in doctors’ offices and drugstores around the country as consumers try to use insurance coverage that took effect on Jan. 1 under the Affordable Care Act.

In addition to the difficulties many face in proving they have coverage, patients are also having a hard time figuring out whether particular doctors are affiliated with their health insurance plan. Doctors themselves often do not know if they are in the network of providers for plans sold on the exchange.

CNN agrees,

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Jeanne Patterson really needs to see a doctor but had to cancel her appointment last week.

Why? Because her new Obamacare benefits were not in order, forcing her to spend hours and hours on hold with her insurer, Independence Blue Cross.

Many folks who signed up for coverage through the state and federal exchanges are running into roadblocks now that they are trying to use their new benefits.

Obamacare is self immolating.

And though exchange officials and insurers have urged consumers to call their insurers if they encounter problems, many say they either wait endlessly on hold or get the runaround. Coverage for the first wave of Obamacare applicants took effect Jan. 1.

If you like your health care plan you can keep it?  If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor? America, so happy you elected the callous, graceless, inept, deceptive, lying skunk in the Oval Office.  Good luck to all!

Save Money, Live Better

It turns out then when Walmart's slogan was "Save Money, Live Better" the corporate behemoth and whipping boy of the left were spot on, for Walmart's employee healthcare plan is better than Obamacare -- less money and better access.

Citing an analysis from the Journal of American Medical Association, the Examiner“concluded an unsubsidized enrollee could pay premiums anywhere from five to nine times what they would pay for a Walmart employee plan” Bream told Carlson.

Additionally, the Walmart employee plan offers better access to quality centers for employees to seek treatment at. Betsy McCaughey, author of Beating Obamacare, commented “People who have someone in their family who has a serious illness should stay away from those Obamacare exchange plans if they can, because those exchange plans don’t give you access to the centers of excellence like Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, academic medical centers around the country where if you’re seriously ill, it may be the only place that can help you.” Bream confirmed “Walmart plans do provide access to those clinics.”

Can you beat that? Good luck to all.

Redistributive Justice

The world of equality, re-distributive taxes, government operated markets and social justice is alive and well in Cuba.

HAVANA (AP) — Talk about sticker shock! 

President Barack Obama sharing the love with
Cuban legacy dictator Raul Castro.

Cubans are eagerly flocking to Havana car dealerships as a new law takes effect eliminating a special permit requirement that has greatly restricted vehicle ownership in the country. To their dismay on Friday, the first day the law was in force, they found sharply hiked prices, some of them light years beyond all but the most well-heeled islanders.

A new Kia Rio hatchback that starts at $13,600 in the United States sells for $42,000 here, while a fresh-off-the-lot Peugeot 508 family car, the most luxurious of which lists for the equivalent of about $53,000 in the U.K., will set you back a cool $262,000.

"Between all my family here in Cuba and over in Miami, we couldn't come up with that kind of money," said Gilbert Losada, a 28-year-old musical director. "We're going to wait and see if they lower the prices, which are really crazy. We're really disappointed."

Cuba's Communist-run government traditionally has placed huge markups on retail goods and services paid for with hard currency, a policy that amounts to a tax on people who can afford such goods. The practice applies to everything from dried pasta, to household appliances, to Internet access.

Through a series of mandates, penalties, excise and income taxes Obamacare is a massive re-distributive tax program that doesn't educate a single nurse, train a single doctor, open a single clinic or build a single hospital. Welcome to the world of socialism Havana style. Best wishes and good luck to all. 

Don't Move, Have a Baby or Get Married or Divorced Under Obamacare

Put your life on hold dude. Because Barack Obama, Kathleen Sebelius and the small-minded, naval gazing social engineers who are responsible for the Obamacare website Healthcare.Gov and their zombie supporters have neglected to allow for these ordinary life changes in their infinite wisdom and their incessant need to control your life.

WASHINGTON — There’s another quirk in the Obama administration’s new health insurance system: It lacks a way for consumers to quickly and easily update their coverage for the birth of a baby and other common life changes.
With regular private insurance, parents just notify the health plan. Insurers will still cover new babies, the administration says, but parents will also have to contact the government at some point later on. 

Right now the HealthCare.gov website can’t handle such updates.

There is more,

It’s not just having a new baby that could create bureaucratic hassles, but other life changes affecting a consumer’s taxpayer-subsidized premiums. The list includes marriage and divorce, a death in the family, a new job or a change in income, even moving to a different community.

There is shrinking minority of Americans (notably including some of the 1 percent who are now ecstatic that younger Americans will subsidize their healthcare benefits and pay for their antacid pills) who support the government's senseless, uneconomic and incompetent intervention.

Insurers say computerized “change in circumstance” updates to deal with family and life developments were supposed to have been part of the federal system from the start.
But that feature got postponed as the government scrambled to fix technical problems that overwhelmed thehealth care website during its first couple of months. 

“It’s just another example of ‘We’ll fix that later,’” said Bob Laszewski, an industry consultant who said he’s gotten complaints from several insurer clients. “This needed to be done well before January. It’s sort of a fly-by-night approach.”

I have gone through all these life changes myself or has my wife.  It took somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes filling our forms and registering phone calls to accommodate the same when the all knowing, beneficent and incompetent government wasn't involved. Assuredly, everyone will avoid going through life changes while the one size fits all, government monopoly waits to interpose its will.

There is no wizard behind the curtain, but best wishes to everyone and good luck to all.

Kathleen Sebelius

She is my person of the year. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius's private sector job for the decade prior to becoming a full time politician was "executive director and chief lobbyist for the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association (now Kansas Association for Justice)." Imagine that -- a lobbyist for ambulance chasers put in charge of regulating, reforming and reinventing the healthcare system to improve quality, lower cost and create access for all. You get what you vote for and you elect what you get. You all ain't seen nothing yet -- 2014 is coming. Good luck to all. 

Senator Maximum Baucus to Fly the Coop

Baucus running as far away from ObamaCare as humanly possible.

Senator Max Baucus (D - Mont.) whose legacy for the American people is authorship of the spaghetti mess, power mongering, liberty destroying, choice limiting, anti-work, anti-family, incompetent and destructive fiscal mess known as ObamaCare, can't wait to get out of town. Having previously professed his desire return to Montana when announcing his impending retirement earlier this year, the route to Bozeman will instead include a multi-year stop in Beijing as U.S. ambassador to China. If and when Baucus actually makes it back to the Gallitan Valley I'm not expecting to run into him at any of the daily fee tracks where I play golf. All you upper crusters out there, say a big "Howdy!" to Max when you see him at Spanish Peaks, Moonlight Basin and Black Bull. Thank you and good luck to all!

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius betrays her ignorance,

ill preparedness and incompetence in a colloquy with 

Senator Max Baucus during a Senate hearing last spring.

HHS Looking for Help

HHS Seal which is forbidden for use on HHS employee
business cards. Please advise if this seal appears as is 
less than 5/8 of an inch on your device for that is violation
 of HHS's terms of use, requiring action by the hard working
 government bureaucracy.

There is so much bad news coming out so fast on the ObamaCare front that Kathleen Sebelius and company over at Health and Human Services (HHS) are looking for help. They've put out a solicitation trolling for vendors to provide media monitoring and analysis services. Here is how the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA) at HHS puts it.

A core responsibility of ASPA and its partner Agency public affairs offices acros (sic) HHS is to provide the Secretary, Department and Agency leadership, and staff with the latest analysis of what the media is reporting about Department-wide and Agency-specific priorities, initiatives, and programs.

HHS explains the need. They are looking for a news aggregation service.

Department and Agency leadership in particular, along with agency staff, need to have early in the morning complete situational awareness of what the media is reporting about the organization and its programs and initiatives.

I got a cost savings suggestion Kathleen. Forget about contracting for services. After teaching your public affairs troops how to use a spell checker, why don't you just tell them to go look it up on Drudge?

Drudge HHS headlines, December 17, 2013, 8:30 am MST

Use an Obamacare Navigator

Not so you can get accurate information and genuine assistance, of course.



The Obamacare navigator program is a fraudulent scheme to pay off Obama's ignorant and unqualified political allies.

One of the biggest risks with the program is prospective enrollees have no way of verifying they are dealing with a genuine (ill-trained and ill-informed as she might be) navigator. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reports,

In addition to the risks associated with an insufficient training program and the lack of background checks, there are already numerous reports of scam artists posing as Navigators and Assisters to take advantage of people’s confusion about ObamaCare. According to recent news reports, scam artists are calling individuals and asking for information to sign them up for their “ObamaCare card,” are asking seniors for their personal information to verify their Medicare and Social Security status and are going door-to-door threatening people with prison time if they do not sign up on the spot. The Administration is keenly aware of these reports and concerns, but has thus far failed to take appropriate measures. 

Kathleen's Sebelius' HHS has taken its normal posture of sitting on its hands and hoping for the best, lest she offend or require legitimacy of any of her political allies.

The Committee has also learned that senior HHS officials raised concerns about the government’s inability to authenticate individuals operating as Navigators and Assisters in May 2013. In response to this concern, HHS considered creating a list of certified Navigators and Assisters for consumers to use as a resource. However, HHS decided against the creation of such a list, and Ms. Gottlich testified that consumers will have no reliable way to learn the identity and association of individuals offering to assist them with enrolling in ObamaCare. The failure of the Administration to provide clarity about prohibited marketing and solicitation techniques and to provide consumers with a list of authenticated Navigators and Assisters substantially increases the number of Americans likely to fail prey to fraud and identity theft. 

More interesting tidbits,

In a transcribed interview, Gary Cohen, the Director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight within HHS, testified “that requiring background checks and fingerprinting could inhibit the availability of Navigators to provide consumer assistance and to do outreach for the marketplaces” and that there “will be Navigators to serve certain communities which may be unwilling to do that if they had to go through a background check and fingerprinting.”

 Wow!  Uneffing believable.  Look out for the scammers using scanners.

Top HHS officials testified that Navigators and Assisters will be allowed to type personally identifiable information into the online application system on behalf of enrollees. One CMS whistleblower warned that because it may not be possible to track every computer and hard drive used by Navigators to gather applicants’ personally identifiable information (PII), the sensitive information is vulnerable. The CMS whistleblower also warned that the devices used to scan supporting documents may store and save the images containing sensitive PII. 

Good luck to all.