Crossroads GPS calls on the United States Senate to call up and pass H.R. 3811, the Health Exchange Security and Transparency Act. This bill passed the House of Representatives last week by an overwhelming, veto-proof, 291-122 margin and deserves to become law immediately.
H.R. 3811 is a modest but important bill designed to improve American’s privacy protections when they participate in the Obamacare health insurance exchanges. Specifically, it requires the Department of Health and Human Services to notify any individual of data breaches in the exchanges that may have caused personally identifiable information to be accessed or stolen. These notifications would be required within two days of discovering the breach.
Such privacy protections are essential given how much personal information Americans must provide in order to sign up for coverage and determine eligibility for subsidies. Identity theft remains a multi-billion dollar societal cost that Americans work very hard to avoid, but government must not be part of the problem. If hackers break into the Obamacare website, Americans should know about it. Embarrassment on the part of government officials is no excuse to withhold this information.
It is well known that the Senate has become a graveyard for legislation passed in the House. It is incumbent upon all Senators not to allow this bill, which passed so overwhelmingly and is so important to protecting the private and personal information of American citizens, to become yet another victim of the majority party leadership’s obstructionism.
