Buried In the Healthcare.gov Source: "No Expectation of Privacy" 365
realized writes "The Obamacare website Healthcare.gov has a hidden terms of service that is not shown to people when they sign up. The hidden terms, only viewable if you 'view source' on the site, says that the user has 'no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data transiting or stored on this information system.' Sadly, the taxpayer-funded website still does not work for most people, so it's hard to confirm – though when it's fixed in two months, we should finally be able to see it."
Note: As the article points out, that phrasing is "not visible to users and obviously not intended as part of the terms and conditions." So users shouldn't worry that they've actually, accidentally agreed to any terms more onerous than the ones they can read on the signup page, but it's an interesting inclusion. What's the last EULA you read thoroughly?
Data mining (Score:2, Informative)
The gov finally caught on as most greedy corps do.
Cut & Paste (Score:5, Informative)
This is boilerplate language from many Federal sites and would seem to be a template cut/paste thing. Examples:
https://logonsm.faa.gov/dotrso/certoptional/myfaa/
https://ampedc1.cms.gov/amserver/UI/Login
http://hsesacpt21.smdi.com/jsso/SSOLogin
https://fedstar.phmsa.dot.gov/FedSTAR/Default.aspx
etc.
Stop pushing the bogus 643 million $ number (Score:4, Informative)
Its *not* $634M (Score:5, Informative)
You can either actually read the article in gory detail, or better yet, go read this breakdown [ordinary-gentlemen.com] of the numbers.
TL;DR --> its around $55.7M (which is still a lot, but is - decidedly - not $634M)
Re:How do we get Congress to sign up? (Score:4, Informative)
Congress is ALREADY required by the ACA to use the plans available from the exchange.
Whomever tells you they have an exemption is a fucking liar.
What is now on the table is whether or not Congress (including the staffers who are not particularly well paid) will get a subsidy like everyone else who has employer covered healthcare insurance does.
closer to $500 million with salaries, servers (Score:4, Informative)
$55 million original estimate for site development
$90 million paid to one company for site development
$500 million total site cost including servers, salaries, etc.
Re:How do we get Congress to sign up? (Score:5, Informative)
It's kind of misleading to say "nobody else is". I know plenty of people who have already had their plans canceled or changed as a direct result of Obamacare; many more have already been warned of sharp premium increases by their insurance company due to Obamacare requirements, which may force some people to cancel plans they can no longer afford.
Re:How do we get Congress to sign up? (Score:4, Informative)
Republicans tried to embarrass the Democrats by requiring Congress members and and their staff to go to the exchanges. Democrats embraced the proposal except it created the dilemma where the Federal Government has no means to make contributions towards exchange-purchased insurance, and since the government offers insurance but the individuals are required to go to the exchanges, they don't technically qualify for the subsidy either. They shot themselves in the foot with the requirement (not that it's a bad requirement) and they're just trying to figure out how to pay for the benefit they already received.
Re:How do we get Congress to sign up? (Score:4, Informative)
This.
Ironically, if the employer mandate wasn't delayed a year (still don't know what was up with that), it would seem to me that Congress could have been fined for dropping coverage for their employees upon the ACA go-live.
Congress is the only employer that is actually required by the ACA to drop their existing coverage of their workers and require them to purchase their own insurance (and contrary to popular belief, you don't have to purchase your insurance on the exchanges; that was just supposed to make it easier - although so far that isn't the case - and would be the only way you get the subsidies if you were eligible for them)
All other employers (above 50 employees) are *required* to provide health insurance to their employees (although enforcement has been delayed a year). So yes, Congress got "exempted", but not in the way the ACA-haters are making it out to be. The "exemption" was actually put in by Charles Grassley, a republican, because he thought that this would kill the bill. However, congress actually said "sure, whatever, we don't have a problem going through the exchanges just like all the people who don't have coverage now". The "exemption" actually requires these employees to get their insurance through the exchanges (or on their own if they want), rather than to just stay on their employer's group plan like most other full time workers in the country.
The only remaining debate is whether to take the money that Congress was previously kicking in as a contribution to their employees' group health care and add it onto their employees' paychecks instead, which seems fair to me.
Re:designed to obfuscate actual prices of plans (Score:4, Informative)
Oh give me a break.
This information is already available on multiple sources and on Healthcare.gov. I am fucking tired of these articles that have NOT been researched or are published with the intent of misleading people.
Plan information from Healtchare.gov without signing in:
https://www.healthcare.gov/find-premium-estimates/ [healthcare.gov]
https://data.healthcare.gov/dataset/QHP [healthcare.gov] ... /ba45-xusy
Example of plan information from 3rd party sources:
http://www.valuepenguin.com/ [valuepenguin.com]
The actual fact is that healthcare.gov. in the first two weeks of operation has made plan price comparisons FAR easier than it has ever been. This could be a major consumer positive event in healthcare.
Re:How do we get Congress to sign up? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How do we get Congress to sign up? (Score:2, Informative)