HealthCare.gov official questioned about website security
Oct. 28, 2013, a screenshot of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' main landing web page for HealthCare.gov.
By Tony Pugh
McClatchy Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON --
A top Obama administration official on Tuesday tried to assure
anxious senators that Americans’ personal information was secure on the
troubled HealthCare.gov website, which erroneously provided a South
Carolina man’s personal information to another man in North Carolina
last week.
In testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Medicare Administrator Marilyn Tavenner said she became aware of the mistake on Monday and told the committee a “software fix” had remedied the problem.
The incident occurred last week when Justin Hadley of North Carolina opened his personal account on HealthCare.gov and saw a letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services addressed to Tom Dougall, of Elgin, S.C. The letter, on U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stationary, included information about Dougall’s eligibility for federal subsidies.
According to a blog on the website of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy think tank Hadley used the information to contact Dougall by phone. He left a message, which caught Dougall by surprise.
“Initially I was concerned because I didn’t know if this was some guy who was scamming me or if in fact this was a guy who really had my personal information,” Dougall told the Heritage blog.
Dougall eventually contacted U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., a member of the Senate health committee, who chided Tavenner about the incident at Tuesday’s hearing. Scott, who called the HealthCare.gov debut “one of the greatest website disasters in history, said Dougall wanted his personal information removed from the site, but HHS staffers could not help him.
“Of course, (neither) Mr. Dougall nor Mr. Hadley will use the website to purchase insurance,” Scott said.
He added that when his staff questioned HHS customer service reps about deleting Mr. Dougall’s information from the website, “The response was...silence,” Scott told Tavenner. “Not a ‘yes.’ Not a ‘no.’ Not a ‘maybe.’ Not ‘Let me check with my supervisor.’ They just simply refused to have not an audible word in response to our questioning.”
Scott also said Dougall’s calls to HHS weren’t returned, but Tavenner, said that was not the case.
“We have reached out to Mr. Dougall,” she said.
Julie Bataille, a spokesperson for HHS’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,” said the problem was caused by a piece of software code that needed to be fixed. She said the fix was made, tested and the system is working properly.
Bataille said it was the only such incident reported to HHS, but she would not speculate about whether other similar incidents have occurred.
end quote from:
In testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Medicare Administrator Marilyn Tavenner said she became aware of the mistake on Monday and told the committee a “software fix” had remedied the problem.
The incident occurred last week when Justin Hadley of North Carolina opened his personal account on HealthCare.gov and saw a letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services addressed to Tom Dougall, of Elgin, S.C. The letter, on U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stationary, included information about Dougall’s eligibility for federal subsidies.
According to a blog on the website of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy think tank Hadley used the information to contact Dougall by phone. He left a message, which caught Dougall by surprise.
“Initially I was concerned because I didn’t know if this was some guy who was scamming me or if in fact this was a guy who really had my personal information,” Dougall told the Heritage blog.
Dougall eventually contacted U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., a member of the Senate health committee, who chided Tavenner about the incident at Tuesday’s hearing. Scott, who called the HealthCare.gov debut “one of the greatest website disasters in history, said Dougall wanted his personal information removed from the site, but HHS staffers could not help him.
“Of course, (neither) Mr. Dougall nor Mr. Hadley will use the website to purchase insurance,” Scott said.
He added that when his staff questioned HHS customer service reps about deleting Mr. Dougall’s information from the website, “The response was...silence,” Scott told Tavenner. “Not a ‘yes.’ Not a ‘no.’ Not a ‘maybe.’ Not ‘Let me check with my supervisor.’ They just simply refused to have not an audible word in response to our questioning.”
Scott also said Dougall’s calls to HHS weren’t returned, but Tavenner, said that was not the case.
“We have reached out to Mr. Dougall,” she said.
Julie Bataille, a spokesperson for HHS’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,” said the problem was caused by a piece of software code that needed to be fixed. She said the fix was made, tested and the system is working properly.
Bataille said it was the only such incident reported to HHS, but she would not speculate about whether other similar incidents have occurred.
end quote from:
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/05/3733653/healthcaregov-official-questioned.html#morer#storylink=cpy
When you have "Trojan Horse" operatives working undercover as computer programmers trying to destroy this website information is going to spew all over the place and not just in the U.S.
So, until there are enough Good will programmers to compensate at a rate exceeding 95% or more you are going to have a real mess in regard to security ongoing. However, I'm not sure how in this intense political climate how you would decide who was a trojan horse programmer and who isn't. IF if you were a black 99% supporter of Obama who was a democrat with all your relatives being democrat as long as they could vote, couldn't that person be tempted by enough MONEY or bribes to make obamacare fail? In this political climate with hundreds of millions of dollars being tossed around (just like during the Clinton administration) by the health care industry to make it fail just like then: How do you make it work if you choose to do it through the Internet where hiring programmers to destroy it would be possible by the dirty tricks department of literally ANY large corporation worldwide?
I mean think about the amounts of money in billions and billions of dollars involved here?
1 comment:
Kelley this is a very interesting post. I an not aware of any company that rates insurance companies in India. I do wish we had one too here. It would be a great help.
Great research and a job meticulously done. Voted up, useful and interesting. Shared too for others to benefit from Shared too for others to benefit from
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