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MNSure, the state's health care exchange, is vulnerable to a specific kind of WiFi attack. We discovered this vulnerability during a simulated attack we ran recently. MNSure denies it has a problem and blames users. 5 Eyewitness News wanted to see how MNSure compares with other state-run health care exchanges. It's why we partnered with Mark Lanterman at Computer Forensic Services to test at least a dozen other exchange sites. More than 41% of the sites tested passed, meaning they are not vulnerable to the type of WiFi attack we simulated. Like MNSure, more than 58% failed the test

LOS ANGELES – The California health exchange says it's been giving the names of tens of thousands of consumers to insurance agents without their permission or knowledge in an effort to hit deadlines for coverage. The consumers in question had gone online to research insurance options but didn't ask to be contacted, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. Officials with Covered California, the exchange set up in response to the federal health law, said they began providing names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses if available this week in a pilot program. They said they thought it would help people...

Minnesota health insurers say they still aren't getting complete information about enrollees in MNsure, the state's health insurance exchange, and the delays could prevent people from having coverage Jan. 1. Data being sent to the health plans contain inaccuracies, omissions and in some cases conflicting information about which policy an enrollee is selecting, according to a letter sent to state officials Friday by Julie Brunner, executive director of the Minnesota Council of Health Plans, a trade group. Insurers also say time is growing short to manually fix the problems -- particularly with an expected surge

White House press secretary Jay Carney sidestepped questions Monday about whether the president has signed up for health insurance under ObamaCare. “I know that he will and has said that he will, the White House has said that he will, but I don't have an update,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters on Monday. Asked what the president was waiting for — and whether his attempt to enroll in the exchange would be open to members of the press — Carney laughed. “I'll get back to you,” he said. In 2010, White House spokesman Reid Cherlin pledged the...

Look to the states, say Obamacare proponents desperate for success stories. A state they won’t be looking to is Hawaii, where the rollout of the health-care law has been an epic fiasco. We’ve been told over the past few weeks that states invested in Obamacare have been able to make it work. On November 12, for instance, the Washington Post noted relatively high enrollment (which means in the tens of thousands) in New York, Washington, Colorado, and Kentucky, adding that “all are among the states that embraced Obamacare and crafted their own exchanges rather than rely on the federal site,...

In what could be the biggest handicap to getting people to sign up for ObamaCare, the public is overwhelmingly concerned about the security of the information compiled by the ObamaCare exchange. The latest IBD/TIPP poll finds that fully 78% say Americans should be concerned about the security features of the ObamaCare exchange website, and 53% say they should be "very concerned." This view was shared across parties, with 69% of Democrats saying security concerns are warranted. More worrisome for the success of the law, 82% of young people between ages 18 and 24 say concern is justified. These are among...

Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield decides to launch three ads that tell people to avoid the Healthcare.gov Web site, because its own site works so much better. A couple of days ago, I received two letters from my health insurance company. One welcomed me to its autopay system -- which was a touch odd, given that I had been in its autopay system for many years. The second told me that I was about to have my health insurance cut off, as I hadn't paid my monthly bill. Please forgive me, then, if I'm not bathed in admiration for the...

If you are not reassured by promises of a user-friendly, secure exchange though, you do have other options when searching for health insurance.

Being doctor shortages are never brought up in the MSM, and never asked of Jay Carney&Obama, maybe it's about time someone in the press ask our far left liberal leaders questions regarding the doctor shortage we already have in the country. Someone needs to ask either Jay Carney/Harry Reid/Nancy Pelosi this question: "How Many Americans Need To Die Waiting For Treatment Because of the Consequences Attributed By The Affordable Health Care Act Before We Repeal It"? And will members receive a full refund if they cannot get access to health-care?

**SNIP** To function as intended, the marketplaces need a broad, healthy risk pool to keep staggering rate increases from occurring. The premiums of healthy, cheap-to-insure people cover the big bills for the relatively small number of sick people. So if the exchanges do not “enroll enough young, healthy people, insurers will have to raise everyone’s premiums,” wrote the New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn in May. “In the worst case, this could create what actuaries call a ‘death spiral’: Rising premiums prompt people to drop out, causing premiums to increase even more.” Because the reform was aimed at bringing coverage to most...

Health insurance premiums for 2014 are so low in many parts of Minnesota that some consumers aren't qualifying for tax credits through the state's new health insurance exchange. Access to tax credits has been widely cited as a key reason for shopping on MNsure -- the new government-run health insurance website -- so some consumers have been confused by the vanishing subsidies, April Todd-Malmlov, the MNsure executive director, said during a board meeting Wednesday in St. Paul. Paraphrasing a common question asked at MNsure's call center, Todd-Malmlov said: "I think there's something wrong with the system -- I'm supposed to...

Senate staffers were notified by the Disbursing Office on Tuesday that they will need to enter the D.C. health care exchange, regardless of their state of residency, and will lose their employer contribution if they do not enter the D.C. exchange, according to a memo obtained by CQ Roll Call. Some Washington, D.C.-based congressional staff retain their in-state residency (oftentimes to pay the lower tax rate in their home state) and all members have district staff outside Washington. The open enrollment in the D.C. exchange for most staffers who are losing their Federal Employee Health Benefits plans will be Nov....

I just found out that Obamacare's Federal Exchange code is all open source and can be copied for examination and use on your own machine at GitHub System Requirements: Linux, Unix, Windows or Mac OS X Ruby RubyGems Jekyll

Just hours after debuting online, the new marketplace for Obamacare has apparently crashed.Consumers are supposed to use Healthcare.gov as an outlet to sign up for coverage, but just after selecting the state where we wanted to enroll, an error message popped up citing heavy traffic from too many visitors. We tried to engage a customer service representative via the site's Live Chat feature, but after 15 minutes of waiting and no response, we gave up. We're not too fussed. Kinks are bound to happen this early in the site's roll out, and at least heavy traffic signals that consumers are eager to...

A Minnesota affiliate reports that MNSure, the state's Obamacare exchange, is down due to a glitch: Likewise, a Connecticut affiliate reports the state's Obamacare "storefront" will be closed for weeks: And in Oregon, the exchange there is delayed due to "glitches" and will be down for weeks:

As has been the case elsewhere around the country, the Obamacare exchange in Washington, D.C. will not be ready on October 1st. DC Health Link, the Obamacare exchange in the nation’s capital, announced Wednesday that the online exchange will not be able to make new Medicaid eligibility determinations. It will also not be calculating tax credits for private insurance “due to a high error rate discovered through extensive systems testing.” According to DC Health Link’s announcement, people seeking those services will be able to create an online account through the exchange, however their initial eligibility will be determined “off-line by...

The Obama administration has delayed yet another piece of the health care overhaul, pushing back online enrollment for small business owners on the new federal health insurance exchange, a Department of Health and Human Services source tells The Washington Post. On the federal exchange, which is scheduled to launch on Tuesday, small business owners will not be able to purchase coverage online until Nov. 1. Instead, for the first month, they will have to mail or fax their information to government officials to enroll on the federal exchange, which will serve individuals and business owners in the 34 states that...

Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander released his analysis of the report's portion on his state. He found that Obamacare will cost far more than what many of his constituents are paying today, some by as much as 190 percent. rom his release: — Today, a 27-year-old man in Memphis can buy a plan for as low as $41 a month. On the exchange, the lowest state average is $119 a month — a 190 percent increase. — Today, a 27-year-old woman in Nashville can also buy a plan for as low as $58 a month. On the exchange, the lowest-priced plan...

An employee for Minnesota's new online health insurance exchange accidentally released confidential information on hundreds of insurance agents. MNsure officials say the employee sent an email to an Apple Valley insurance broker's office Thursday that contained Social Security numbers, addresses and other private information of more than 2,400 insurance agents. An MNsure security manager called the insurance broker, Jim Koester, and had him delete the file from his computer hard drive. Koester tells the Star Tribune the incident raises questions about the security of MNsure client information. Users of the exchange will need to provide confidential information to a federal...

(Reuters) - Aetna Inc has decided not to sell insurance on New York's individual health insurance exchange, which is being created under President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law, the fifth state where it has reversed course in recent weeks. The third-largest U.S. health insurer has said it is seeking to limit its exposure to the risks of providing health plans to America's uninsured, but did not give details about its decision to pull out of specific markets. "We believe it is critical that our plans not only be competitive, but also financially viable, in order to meet the long-term needs...