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Federal ‘Biosurveillance’ Plan Seeking Direct Access to Americans’ Private Medical Records (+video)

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Photo Credit: CCHFThe federal government is piecing together a sweeping national “biosurveillance” system that will give bureaucrats near real-time access to Americans’ private medical information in the name of national security, according to Twila Brase, a public health nurse and co-founder of the Citizens Council for Health Freedom.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response is currently seeking public comment on a 52-page draft of the proposed “National Health Security Strategy 2015-2018” (NHSS).

The deadline for comment is 5 pm EST on May 21st. (See Draft National Health Security Strategy 2015-2018.pdf)

“Health situational awareness includes biosurveillance and other health and non-health inputs (e.g., lab/diagnostics, health service utilization, active intelligence, and supply chain information), as well as systems and processes for effective communication among responders and critical health resource monitoring and allocation,” the draft states.

But Brase warns that the NHSS proposal would allow the federal government to monitor an individual’s behavior before, during and after any government-defined health “incident” – which could be anything from a local outbreak of the flu to a terrorist anthrax attack.

Read more from this story HERE.

California Bill Seeks to Extend Subsidized Health Care to Illegal Immigrants

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Lucy NicholsonA California Democrat is looking to extend taxpayer-funded health-care benefits to illegal immigrants.

State Sen. Ricardo Lara of Long Beach introduced legislation late last week that would extend health-care coverage to all Californians “irrespective of immigration status.”

“The purpose of the Health For All Act is simple — provide health care coverage to California’s remaining uninsured by expanding Medi-Cal and creating a new health exchange where the undocumented can purchase coverage,” Lara said in a statement.

Read more this story HERE.

Obama Claims Health Care Problems don’t Reflect on his Management Style (+video)

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Photo Credit: APPresident Barack Obama said Thursday that problems with the Obamacare rollout don’t mean he needs to change his White House management style.

Instead, the health care mess is indicative of broader problems with the federal bureaucracy that he hasn’t been able to solve, Obama told Chris Matthews during an MSNBC interview.

“The challenge, I think, that we have going forward is not so much my personal management style or particular issues around White House organization,” Obama said. “It actually has to do with what I referred to earlier, which is we have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly.”

Obama said “it was obvious that we needed additional controls in place” before Affordable Care Act enrollment began Oct. 1. Yet he said none of those controls center around the structure and style of his White House.

Read more from this story HERE.

President Obama Spreading Misinformation About ObamaCare, Again…

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsIs President Obama’s latest health care promise – that his plan will offer “most” people a better plan for the same price or less than their current policy – actually true?

Some analysts say no.

“That’s not an accurate argument,” says Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute. “If your plan is now covering a bunch of things that you don’t need, then how is it a better plan for you?”

Former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Holtz-Eakin says there’s no evidence to support the president’s claim.

“You can do the math,” he says. “Most of the policies in his claim could spend more, cover more things, provide more visits and charge less.” But, he concludes, “the arithmetic just does not work.”

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State Confirms Security Breach To Health Care Exchange Website

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Photo Credit: KAREN BLEIER/AFP/GettyOfficials overseeing the Vermont Health Connect website confirmed Friday there was a security breach on the system last month in which one user got improper access to another user’s Social Security number and other data.

A report from state to federal officials overseeing the health insurance exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act said a consumer reported the incident with the Vermont Health Connect website on Oct. 17.

The consumer, whom officials would not identify, reported that he received in the mail — from an unnamed sender — a copy of his own application for insurance under the state exchange.

“On the back of the envelope was hand-written ‘VERMONT HEALTH CONNECT IS NOT A SECURE WEBSITE!’ This was also (written) on the back of the last page of the printed out application,” said the incident report.

The report was prepared by Greg Needle, privacy administrator with Vermont Health Connect, and filed with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The Associated Press obtained it after a request under the state public records law to the Department of Vermont Health Access.

Read more from this story HERE.

States Rejecting Obama’s ‘Fix’ Shows Plan Will Have Little Impact on Improving ObamaCare

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Photo Credit: Fox News Connecticut is the most recent state to reject President Obama’s plan to “fix” his signature health-care law after millions of Americas received policy cancellation notices — a trend that suggests the president’s proposed solution will have little impact on the issue.

At least eight others states — California, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington — have rejected the president’s Nov. 14 proposal that insurance companies offer plans that don’t comply with ObamaCare requirements for at least a year. Connecticut decided Friday.

Though ObamaCare is federal law, governors and insurance commissioners must allow providers to make the exceptions because insurance is regulated differently in each state.

Obama in touting his sweeping health-care reform law before signing it in 2010 told Americans they could keep their existing insurance plans if they liked them.

However, many of those plans do not meet the law’s new standards, which has resulted in millions of cancellation notices being mailed out over the past few months and the president announcing his proposed solution.

Read more from this story HERE.

White House Email Chain Shows Launch Fears

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Photo Credit: ReutersTop White House and health officials feared that HealthCare.gov would not work correctly and would set off a wave of bad publicity, according to emails shortly before the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare enrollment website.

The emails, released Wednesday evening by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, included a picture of an error message that has become emblematic of the launch debacle. They were dated Sept. 25 — less than a week before the enrollment portal opened and immediately created a crisis for the White House.

A White House spokesman said the emails — which use technical terms — focused on problems that could arise if there was high traffic to the site, not to a fear that the site wouldn’t work at all.

In the emails Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Deputy Chief Information Officer Henry Chao summed up concerns that he said White House Chief Technology Officer Todd Park had expressed.

“When Todd Park and Marilyn [Tavenner] was here yesterday one of the things Todd conveyed was this fear the WH has about hc.gov being unavailable,” Chao said, referring to CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner.

Read more from this story HERE.

Health Care Plans in DC Cover Abortion, Not Hearing Aids

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Photo Credit: France1978/flickrMultiple individual plans available on the D.C. health-insurance exchange specifically cover elective abortion but not hearing aids, routine foot-care, and routine eye-care. One such plan, Healthy Blue PPO $1500, has a summary on the D.C. exchange’s website titled “Excluded Services & Other Covered Services.” It says enrollees can receive coverage for abortions performed for non-medical reasons, but not for a number of other services that could seem medically necessary. The plan also excludes coverage for some other procedures, including cosmetic surgery, bariatric surgery, and infertility treatment.

Per Anna Higgins of the Family Research Council, in D.C. Aetna plans and multi-state plans run by the Office of Personnel Management and offered by Blue Cross Blue Shield specifically don’t offer elective abortion coverage. All the other plans offered in the District do cover elective abortion. When she wrote about the issue in October for TownHall, representatives from the D.C. exchange told her that plans were required to cover abortion because it was an “essential benefit.” That’s incorrect, however, and the exchange later retracted the statement. The Affordable Care Act specifically states that abortion is not an essential benefit, so not all plans cover the procedure.

Read more from this story HERE.

Americans Don’t Think Health Care is Government Responsibility

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Photo Credit: Thinkstock ImageFifty-six percent of American adults say it’s not the federal government’s responsibility to ensure everyone in U.S. has health insurance, according to a new poll from Gallup.

Just 42 percent believe it is the responsibility of the government, the lowest number recorded since Gallup began tracking the opinions in 2000.

Photo Credit: Gallup

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Announces One Year Optional Delay In Requiring Insurance Companies To Cancel Policies (+video)

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Photo Credit: Breitbart By David Espo and Julie Pace.

Bowing to pressure, President Barack Obama on Thursday announced changes under his health care law to give insurance companies the option to keep offering consumers plans that would otherwise be canceled.

The administrative changes are good for just one year, though senior administration officials said they could be extended if problems with the law persist. Obama announced the changes at the White House.

“This fix won’t solve every problem for every person, but it’s going to help a lot of people,” the president said.

But it was unclear if state officials, who would have to implement the changes, would go along. Insurers also had concerns.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners said the president’s proposal could undermine the new health insurance markets his law seeks to create.

Read more from this story HERE.

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‘Fairy Tale’ Continues as Obama Proposes Extralegal Obamacare Fix

By Daniel Halper.

Earlier this week, former President Bill Clinton advised President Obama to “honor the commitment” he made and to allow Americans to keep their health care plans, if they like them. That was a central promise Obama made when he sold Obamacare, but one that turned out not to be true when Obamacare began to be implemented last month.

“So I personally believe, even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got,” Clinton in an interview released Tuesday.

Now President Obama is taking Clinton’s advice and trying to honor that commitment. In remarks today at the White House today, Obama said, “I completely get how upsetting this can be” to lose insurance plans that I promised Americans would be able to keep. “To those Americans, I hear you loud and clear.”

But there’s a catch with president’s proposed solution. The president is not proposing that the law be changed to allow all health insurance plans grandfathered into Obamacare’s eligibility requirements.

No, instead the White House is saying that it will use “enforcement discretion” to allow illegal health insurance plans to be able to still be sold. That is, the Obama administration will not enforce the penalty on individuals for not having eligible health insurance plans and they’ll allow the insurance companies to still sell so-called bad plans — plans they technically can’t sell under Obamacare.

Read more from this story HERE.