HIX and Obamacare

One thing we can always agree on, the federal government is in a class by themselves when it comes to redundancy and coming up with creative (and not so creative) acronyms for another bureaucratic process.

Meet HIX.

Health Insurance Exchange will now be referred to as HIX.

One can imagine the looks you will get when you tell your friends you work for HIX.

The exchanges are supposed to use one application process to help consumers find out whether they are eligible for health coverage subsidies or for exemptions from the PPACA "shared responsibility" health insurance ownership mandate.

Life Health Pro

One application.

The 21 page application linked above.

Yes, that should make it simple. Something like form 1040 + Schedule A + Schedule B + Schedule C all rolled in to one.

Don't you just love the term "shared responsibility"? Makes it sound like we are just one big family. Or it takes a village . . .

Now take a look at who is involved in helping you find a plan and determining if you are even eligible.

An exchange program "Data Services Hub" will help exchanges get eligibility information and check applications by pulling data from the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Peace Corps and the federal Office of Personnel Management.

The Peace Corps?

Or as the prez calls it, Peace Corpse.

With that many agencies helping, what could possibly go wrong?

For all exchanges, CMS will administer the new PPACA health insurance purchase tax credit program and the new "cost-sharing reduction" program, officials said.

There's that term again.

Cost sharing gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling, right?

In addition to PII about HIX program applicants, the system will include PII about navigators, agents and brokers; exchange employees and contractors; CMS employees and contractors; insurers that sell coverage through the exchanges; and employers that have workers sign up for health coverage through the new Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) exchanges.

In addition to names, contact information and health coverage information, the types of data that could be stored in the record system could include information about whether an individual is incarcerated, the individual's religion, the individual's household income, and information about whether an individual is pregnant.

Sounds like hacker's heaven. All that data flowing around between agencies, just waiting to be taken.

Think it will never happen?

Guess again.

Remember the spy drone that was hacked by the Iranian military and forced to land inside their borders? Of course we asked them to give it back.

No word on whether Hell has frozen over or not.

And don't forget you are working with HIX.

Thanks to Henry Stern for the heads up.