The federal government may be one step closer to keeping tabs on consumers’ health care information with a new data hub compiling personal information from a host of government agencies and newly collected health status information.
Some experts warn it could get even more invasive over time.
The Data Services Hub will be the primary computer program to verify eligibility for Obamacare exchanges. But the program will collect and compile such massive amounts of information that lawmakers and experts are increasingly fearful of privacy infringement.
Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Pat Meehan warned The Daily Caller News Foundation that the program is a “massive data grab” and will put citizens’ private information at risk.
But the program, which has been receiving heat over the large amount of personal data it will connect from various government sources, will also add health status to the mix — an addition Meehan finds disturbing
Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Marilyn Tavenner, whose department will oversee the Hub, told lawmakers last week that the limited health information required will be relevant to the type of coverage they receive under Obamacare exchanges.
“Well,” Meehan asked The DCNF, “other health circumstances might change coverage — will we have to be reporting to the government other health changes as well?”
Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies, warns it could. ”The economics of Obamacare require that the federal government will have to do more to delve into people’s medical care,” Cannon told TheDCNF.
The government’s problem lies in an Obamacare requirement for a certain level of coverage for a certain price, creating “huge incentives for insurers to avoid the sick,” Cannon explained. “Insurers have to provide coverage to customers for $10,000 when the person uses $100,000 in medical care.”