Who’s Responsible for the Shutdown?
All around the country, Americans are asking one question: Who’s responsible for the shutdown? And no, we’re not talking about the government slowdown—we’re talking about the Obamacare shutdown.
All claims to the contrary, Obamacare has been effectively shut down—people are running into roadblocks and error messages when trying to enroll in plans. And the New York Times this morning explains that one of the major problems in getting exchanges to work has been a database created by the federal government:
One bottleneck identified by state officials on Wednesday seemed to be occurring when state-run exchanges communicate with the federal data “hub” to verify a person’s citizenship, identity and income through agencies like the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security.
About 18,000 people had created accounts on Nevada’s exchange by midafternoon Wednesday, said C. J. Bawden, a spokesman. But he said processing was slowed by trouble communicating with the federal system to establish their identity and eligibility, one of the last steps in the process. Minnesota officials also reported problems with the identity checking process. “We have it corrected as of now, but it was a federal-side problem,” Mr. Bawden said.
In other words, both state-based and federally run exchanges can’t function properly, because the federal government dropped the ball in creating a technically competent database.
The data hub brings with it other concerns, over and above the current inability for applicants to enroll in plans. Because the hub links to many government databases containing Social Security, tax, and other sensitive personal data, a breach of the hub could lead to identity theft and other frauds.
Given the rushed implementation process, and the federal government’s poor track record when it comes to cybersecurity, many Americans should be worried that the data hub’s initial problems may represent the tip of the iceberg.
Despite the fact that Obamacare seems to be doing a good job of collapsing under its own weight, Congress should still act to prevent any more federal taxpayer dollars from being used to implement this inherently unworkable law—and to keep taxpayers’ information safe.
This post was originally published at The Daily Signal.