The Breaches

Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more into the breach.

Shakespeare (1564-1516), King Henry the Fifth

Ye shall know my breach.

Numbers 14:34

A breach, for those of you not in the know, is a violation or infraction, as of the law, a legal obligation, or promise, as in a dike or fortification.

Yesterday the Obama administration and the House of Representatives acted to close two egregious breaches related to the Affordable Care Act, which,  insists Nancy Pelosi, should not be called “Obama Care” because that is not its official title and presumably because ObamaCare has pejorative overtones. 

The first act was the White House’s announcement that it was ending its contract with CGI, the Montreal-based firm, that supposedly oversaw and orchestrated the launch of healthcare.gov.   This website represents the most serious breach of ObamaCare.  It is, above all,  a potentially fatal breach into the credibility and competence of ObamaCare’s implementation and its political future, particularly its deleterious effect on the November 2014 midterm elections.  The cancellation of the CGI contract  indicates that all is still not well with healthcare.gov.     The new contractor for fixing the problems of healthcare.gov will be Accenture, a large IT company that built the California health exchange site, which appears to be working well.

The second act was the passage  by the House of Representatives of The Health Exchange and Transparency Act  #3811.  The vote was 291-22, with 67 Democrats joining 224 Republicans in passing the measure, which the White House opposed.  The bill calls for CMS to notify individuals within 2 days of security breaches incurred while enrolling for ObamaCare health exchanges.  The passage indicates extreme concerns over potential data and security breaches that may occur as the result of millions of Americans supplying confidential personal information in order to qualify for health exchange plans.  The vote came in the wake of scattered reports  that hackers were at work stealing identity information from healthcare.gov and the widely publicized news that Target Inc had inadvertently leaked personal identity information on 70 million Target shoppers. 

Tweet:  CMS  has changed contractors for healthcare.gov, and Congress has passed Act 3811 to notify individuals within 2 days of health exchange security breaches.