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?
Odious terms of service etc (Score:1, Interesting)
Last one I read was for Google Chrome. After reading it, I decided NOT to install Chrome. At age 75 I will NOT allow anyone to update my computer without my express permission.
Re:How do we get Congress to sign up? (Score:3, Interesting)
The latest House proposal for increasing the debt limit specifies that the Pres and Congress must use Obamacare. Not sure if that means eliminating the outrageous 75% subsidy or not. I'm sure the Dems will reject.
designed to obfuscate actual prices of plans (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems a better option would simply to take the persons word for it up front, let them see the prices displayed depending on the personal and family information they entered and then only do the background verification after they "checkout" and actually purchase a plan. That way they just get an email later on if there is a problem with anything they entered or if the prices change based on something determined based on the background check and credit check. Or if as news reports suggest they are going to have to go through an income verification process as part of the Senate compromise, then doing the credit check up front in "real time" is an extra step anyway. Could even make the insurance companies do the final eligibility check as part of their 15% commission.
Trying to process through hundreds of millions of records in less than tens of seconds is a stupid thing to try to do just to keep people from finding out what your prices really are even if you have hundreds of millions of dollars to blow through. They could have fully insured 100,000 more people for the money that has been wasted just on healthcare.gov.
Re:How do we get Congress to sign up? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How do we get Congress to sign up? (Score:1, Interesting)
and you left out about the staffers getting a 73% subsidy. Bias much?
And just wait, ALL HEALTH CARE WILL BE ON YOUR PAYCHECK.
You will be paying with after tax dollars eventually. Why the fck else would our W2's need amendment.
Re: How do we get Congress to sign up? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not quite risk mitigation any more. The pre existing condition clause of the ACA means ypu can wait for the risk to become reality then mitigate costs. That is why it is neccesary to enslave everyone by penalty.
Re: How do we get Congress to sign up? (Score:5, Interesting)
Insurance is, by definition, payment to mitigate risk. If one has the ability to back up that risk, as the 1% do, it is on average better to not get insurance.
This may be a good strategy for some (most?) types of insurance, like the rental car collision damage insurance you mentioned, but perhaps not for health insurance. Some health care costs can be quite high, far exceeding the price of the premiums, and having/using insurance can get you a much better rate on most of that, lowering your total expense.
For example, my wife died of a brain tumor (Glioblastoma Multiforme [wikipedia.org]) in 2006. The list (non-insurance) price for her chemotherapy medicine, Temodar [wikipedia.org] was $11,000 (not a typo) for a one-month supply (one bottle of pills); her HMO co-pay was $40 (forty) - my BC/BS co-pay would have been 10%. She would have needed 4 months, had she lived longer.
The list price for the treatment she actually received in the 7 weeks from diagnosis to death was about $300,000, but I only paid about $500 - her premiums were far less than the list price of her treatment.