Free Republic

We all now know what happened with the federal healthcare marketplace, Healthcare.gov. The three-year development was complicated by changing specifications, and the government's convoluted procurement process meant entrenched companies were getting contracts over and over. But a wave of government accountability reports, concluded after months of investigations, is bringing new attention to the meltdown. The Government Office of Accountability released a report earlier this week detailing the security flaws in the site, but a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released yesterday is even more damning.

Government insiders who flagged security issues prior to the launch of HealthCare.gov were right to be concerned. That’s according to a new audit by the Government Accountability Office, which concluded that security weaknesses are putting “the sensitive personal information” contained by HealthCare.gov and its related systems at risk. As the Obama administration prepared to launch the website last fall, one of those insiders voiced concern about the vulnerabilities and complained about “cover ups” masking the severity of the problems.

The Internal Revenue Service this week will publish a final rule requiring Obamacare health insurance exchanges to hand over key personal data to the IRS, which will use the information to implement the tax aspects of the controversial health care law. The IRS rule covers health exchanges that sell insurance to individuals, and it takes effect this year. That means people enrolled in an Obamacare exchange this year will have their information given to the IRS as soon as it’s needed for tax purposes. Information to be handed over from Obamacare exchanges includes names, addresses, taxpayer identification numbers, insurance premium...

WASHINGTON — People who have accounts on the enrollment website for President Barack Obama’s signature health care law are being told to change their passwords following an administration-wide review of the government’s vulnerability to the confounding Heartbleed Internet security flaw. Senior administration officials said there is no indication that the HealthCare.gov site has been compromised and the action is being taken out of an abundance of caution. The government’s Heartbleed review is ongoing, the officials said, and users of other websites may also be told to change their passwords in the coming days, including those with accounts on the popular...

Developers linked to the government of Belarus may have placed malicious code inside the healthcare.gov website allowing it to hack into the personal information of consumers. No - I'm serious. Washington Free Beacon: U.S. intelligence agencies last week urged the Obama administration to check its new healthcare network for malicious software after learning that developers linked to the Belarus government helped produce the website, raising fresh concerns that private data posted by millions of Americans will be compromised.The intelligence agencies notified the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency in charge of the Healthcare.gov network, about their concerns...

U.S. intelligence agencies last week urged the Obama administration to check its new healthcare network for malicious software after learning that developers linked to the Belarus government helped produce the website, raising fresh concerns that private data posted by millions of Americans will be compromised. The intelligence agencies notified the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency in charge of the Healthcare.gov network, about their concerns last week. Specifically, officials warned that programmers in Belarus, a former Soviet republic closely allied with Russia, were suspected of inserting malicious code that could be used for cyber attacks, according to U.S....

Debacle: U.S. intelligence agencies report that developers linked to the Belarus government helped create the Healthcare.gov website and may have inserted malicious code making it vulnerable to cyberattacks and hacking. The disastrous rollout of Healthcare.gov was bad enough. But as if Americans need another reason to avoid Healthcare.gov, we now hear that the Obama administration, through the Department of Health and Human Services, has indirectly contracted with developers in the worker's paradise of Belarus, a former Soviet republic still closely tied to Russia, to write some of the software code used for the website. The Washington Free Beacon's Bill Gertz...

February 4, 2014 Recalled Report Raises Question of Politicization of Intelligence Bachmann seeks answers from president, HHS on Obamacare security flaws Bill Gertz A member of the House Intelligence Committee said Tuesday she is investigating whether an intelligence report warning about risks to Americans who posted data on the Obamacare website was suppressed for political reasons.Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) said she plans to write to President Barack Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius urging them to immediately shut down the Healthcare.gov website over concerns that the system is vulnerable to cyber attacks as a result of...

A Virginia man’s personal information has been stolen after he signed up for Obamacare on the healthcare.gov website. Now, he’s questioning if the website is the reason why. “There’s a possibility someone got my personal information from your website,” Virginia Beach resident Rich Guillory said in a video shot by WVEC-VA while speaking on the phone. “They knew my name and they had my number” — along with his address and social security number as well. he day after he signed up on the website, he got a call from someone claiming they could help him with finding health insurance....

The On Your Side Investigators revealed the colossal cost of Cover Oregon for the first time Monday and it shows how much of your tax money has been spent on the failed website. KATU learned Cover Oregon and the Oregon Health Authority collectively spent just shy of $200 million on its Cover Oregon website, which has been plagued with problems for months and still hasn't enrolled a single Oregonian for health insurance since the site launched Oct. 1, 2013. The state health insurance exchange's top dogs have been back and forth for months, extending the date when the website likely...

It's time for your latest Obamacare update, and it will come as no surprise to you that things are not getting any prettier for this monstrosity. Let's just take a jog down Obamacare Avenue and see what is popping out at us from the storefronts this week. Roll down your windows so you can get a clearer look: --Obamacare devotees are still clinging to the idea that this law will expand coverage, but the most recent data indicate that it may fall short of this goal, too, just as it has failed in every other respect. Forbes reports that instead...

The hits just keep on coming for ObamaCare. It was less than two weeks ago that I highlighted the potential premium rate death spiral that ObamaCare faces due to the fact that only old and sick people are signing up for the program. Now it seems there are further security related concerns plaguing the site, as cyber-security expert David Kennedy recently claimed that “gaining access to 70,000 personal records of Obamacare enrollees via HealthCare.gov took about 4 minutes.” It’s actually hard to be this incompetent if you tried. More from the Washington Times: The man who appeared before Congress last...

The man who appeared before Congress last week to explain the security pitfalls of HealthCare.gov took to Fox News on Sunday to explain just how easy it was to penetrate the website. Hacking expert David Kennedy told Fox’s Chris Wallace that gaining access to 70,000 personal records of Obamacare enrollees via HealthCare.gov took about 4 minutes and required nothing more than a standard browser, the Daily Caller reported. PHOTOS: Eye-popping excuses in American political scandals “And 70,000 was just one of the numbers that I was able to go up to and I stopped after that,” he said. “You know,...

The Obamacare website is even less secure than it was in November, David Kennedy, head of computer security consulting firm TrustedSec LLC, told Fox News Sunday. Kennedy testified before Congress Thursday that the site was “100 percent” insecure and personal information for consumers at healthcare.gov was at risk, Reuters reports: Before the hearing, Kennedy told Reuters the government has yet to plug more than 20 vulnerabilities that he and other security experts reported to the government shortly after HealthCare.gov went live on October 1. Hackers could steal personal information, modify data, attack the personal computers of website users and damage...

We’re from the government and we’re here to help. One in seven Obamacare navigators in New Mexico is listed in the FBI’s crime information database.But these “experts” are here to serve you.New Mexico Watchdog reported: An investigation by the National Review, one of the leading conservative media outlets in the country, reports that one in seven navigators in New Mexico hired to help consumers work their way through the Affordable Care Act appeared on the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database.But an official with the state’s Affordable Care Act Implementation Projects emphasizes that while a person’s name may turn up on the FBI database, it does not mean they pose any risk to...

Cybersecurity researchers slammed HealthCare.gov's security during a House hearing on Thursday morning, saying the site is still riddled with problems that could put consumers' sensitive health details at risk. “The reason we’re concluding that this is so shockingly bad is that the issues across the site are so varied,” David Kennedy, founder of the information security firm TrustedSec, told NBC News. “You don’t even have to hack into the system to see big issues – which means there are [major problems] underneath.” Kennedy was the first of a group of so-called "white-hat hackers" who testified before the House of Representatives...

Security expert -- and once the world's most-wanted cyber criminal -- Kevin Mitnick submitted a scathing criticism to a House panel Thursday of ObamaCare's Healthcare.gov website, calling the protections built into the site "shameful" and "minimal." In a letter submitted as testimony to the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, Mitnick wrote: "It's shameful the team that built the Healthcare.gov site implemented minimal, if any, security best practices to mitigate the significant risk of a system compromise."

The Obama administration stopped short Thursday of threatening to veto House bills to require officials to tell people if their personal data has been compromised through ObamaCare, and to require weekly reports on the health law's implementation. The White House said in two Statements of Administration Policy that it opposed both bills, one of which is set for a Friday vote in the House. Weekly reporting requirements on both enrollments and the operation of the HealthCare.gov website would require "unfunded, unprecedented, and unnecessary reporting requirements" on the health insurance exchanges, it said in one statement. "It would require the reporting...

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina health officials said Friday that they had inadvertently disclosed the personal information of tens of thousands of children receiving Medicaid coverage, but were tight-lipped about precisely what caused the massive privacy breach. The state Department of Health and Human Services issued a written release saying that new Medicaid cards for nearly 49,000 children were mailed on Dec. 30 to the wrong people. The information on the cards includes the children’s names, Medicaid identification numbers, dates of birth and the names of their primary care doctors — personal medical data that is supposed to be...

HONOLULU — He won’t use it, and he didn’t actually sign up for it himself, but President Barack Obama has enrolled for health coverage through the new insurance exchanges. Announcing his enrollment Monday, the White House called it a symbolic show of Obama’s support for the fledgling exchanges where millions of Americans must buy insurance or face a penalty. Ironically, it also served as a reminder of just how complex and sometimes daunting the process can be. Obama, like so many other Americans, couldn’t use the website. “The complicated nature of the president’s case required an in-person sign-up,” the White...