Another Friday Afternoon 3 P.M. Press Release

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP, MACE

It seems
that all official Obama administration reports that portend bad news for the
administration’s policy are released late Friday afternoon when everyone is
heading home for the weekend.

It is a
time when the news of the reports and press releases are least noticed.

The late
Friday afternoon report on August 2, 2013 was released the afternoon congress
was going on summer recess for the month of August.

The HHS Inspector General announced that Obamacare’s privacy protections program
is way behind schedule. It will not be ready by October 1^st when
policies will be available to the public. It opens the door for rampant
violations of the law.  

'Based on OIG’s analysis, Obamacare’s exchanges
may end up illegally exposing Americans’ private records to hackers and
criminals."

The Privacy Act of 1974
mandates that each agency of the federal government utilize administrative and
physical security systems to prevent the unauthorized release of personal
records.

The Federal Information
Security Management Act of 2002 requires the executive branch to ensure that
Americans’ private records are protected from misuse and security breaches.

The Obama administration is
ignoring these laws. On his road show this week he said the health insurance
exchanges will start selling insurance on October 1,2013 to go into effect
January 1, 2014.

“In the
case of the Obamacare hub, any serious security breach could result in
identity theft.”

The Obamacare “Hub”
computer system cost the government $267 million so far.  It is
supposed to provide the government with the means to see which applicants
qualify for what programs.

On another Friday afternoon during the July 4^th weekend,” Sarah Kliff and Sandhya Somashekhar of
the Washington Post discovered that the Obama administration had
buried in the Federal Register the
announcement that the government won’t be able to verify whether or not
applicants for Obamacare’s insurance exchange subsidies are actually qualified
for the aid, in the 16 states that are setting up their own exchanges."

 "Instead,
until at least 2015, these states will be able to “accept the applicant’s
attestation [regarding eligibility] without further verification.” 

This appeared in the Federal
Register two days after the July 3^rd announcement that the federal
government would postpone for one year a requirement that employers with 50 or
more full-time workers provide health coverage.

I think these announcements
warrant the term ”Weekend Surprises”
or DBA “I hope no one notices.”

“The Obamacare health insurance exchanges
mandate the creation of a “data hub” through which exchanges can access
personal records from seven different agencies—the Internal Revenue Service,
the Social Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the
Veterans Health Administration, the Department of Defense, the Office of
Personnel Management, and the Peace Corps—in order to determine eligibility for
exchange subsidies and mandate penalties.”

Under FISMA, the Obama administration must
adhere to the guidelines of the National Institute of Standards and Technology
in achieving these safeguards, before the Obamacare exchanges can legally
operate.

 It seems it is much more convenient to ignore the law
written by the Obama administration and Democrats. Unfortunately, Republicans
have not pointed this out to the people.

It gets worse. This policy
not only ignores the law of the land it encourages fraud and abuse.

 According to the law, a person or family is
not eligible for Obamacare’s subsidies if your employer has offered you what
the government considers “affordable” coverage.

Employers are not going
to have to report whether or not they’ve offered “affordable” coverage. How can
the government verify whether or not workers are eligible for subsidies? 

 The Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services said. “The exchange may accept the applicant’s
attestation regarding enrollment in an eligible employer-sponsored plan…without
further verification, instead of following the procedure in
§155.320(d)(3)(iii).”

The Obama administration
will also allow people to gain means-tested subsidized coverage on the
exchanges without having to have the IRS do means testing on their income.

According to CMS,

 “For income verification, for the first year of operations, we are
providing Exchanges with temporarily expanded discretion to accept an
attestation of projected annual household income without further verification.”

 Another President Obama
trick. If enough people enroll in the new entitlement it will be politically
impossible for Republicans to repeal Obamacare in the future.

These ad-lib rules
deliberately encourage tens of billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse.  

Who is going to suffer
in the long run? Hard-working taxpayers. These taxpayers will not receive
subsidies. Many of them do not support Obamacare.

Where is the Republican
outrage?

President Obama
anticipated the Republican outrage this week on his political road show.

President Obama blamed Republicans for doing
everything in their power to torpedo Obamacare implementation
during a Friday afternoon “press conference” before going on his $7.6 million
dollar a week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.

 “The “one unifying principle” for Republicans
was keeping 30 million people from getting healthcare, hurting the elderly,
removing care for the ill.

“There’s not a
pretense how they’re going to replace it with something better,” Obama said. He
accused Republicans of an “ideological fixation.” He then compared the
Obamacare rollout glitches to glitches in Apple rolling out a new iPad. “I make
no apologies” for such glitches, he stated.

Then he said it
would be foolish for Republicans to “shut down the government to prevent 30
million people from getting healthcare.”

Notice President Obama's use of words.

Pure unadulterated well crafted demagoguery.

When are the Republicans’ going to respond? When are the
people going to recognize President Obama’s game.

Hopefully not before it is too late.

 The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone

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