Details from Medicare offered on auction site came from a ‘bad person doing a bad thing’, Senate inquiry hears
Medicare details sold on the darknet were not obtained through hacking but by a “bad person doing a bad thing from a legitimate channel,” a Senate inquiry has heard.
Guardian Australia revealed in July that Medicare card details were offered for sale on a darknet auction site and that the vendor, provided with a journalist’s name and date of birth, was able to produce the requested Medicare number for a fee of 0.0089 bitcoin, or US$22.
Continue reading...
health
Why turning public health care into ‘block grants’ can’t work
Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) released their bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Wednesday — the last GOP plan left standing.
The chances for the bill to pass are slim to none. It needs to be scored by the Congressional Budget Office and cleared by the Senate parliamentarian — the designated health care referee — to see if it adheres to budget rules. Additionally, many critical lawmakers have said that the Senate needs ...
While attention turns to health care for all, let’s talk about coverage for immigrants
As progressives consider proposals to implement universal health care, it’s important to define the principle that’s driving them. What unites Democrats right now is the idea that health care is a right afforded to all. If that’s the self-imposed litmus test, it’s essential to define “all” when discussing universal health care.
Millions of people who live in the United States are currently uninsured. High costs remain a major barrier to coverage; ...
How Bernie Sanders would fund his Medicare for All plan
On Wednesday afternoon on the second floor of the Hart Senate Office Building, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) officially unveiled his much-hyped Medicare for All plan. The senator was flanked by his 16 co-sponsors, many of them rising stars in the Democratic party and nearly every one of them talked about as a potential presidential candidate in 2020.
The basic idea of the plan is this: Over the course of four years, the state would expand eligibility for Medicare until every resident o...
My Health patient data will be safe despite Medicare breach, GPs say
RACGP has told a Senate inquiry layers of security will help prevent breaches such as the theft of Medicare numbers that were sold on the darknet
The breach of Medicare data that resulted in patient card numbers being sold on the darknet should not have any significant implications for the government rollout of My Health Record, says the peak body for general practitioners
My Health Record will involve patient’s health information being uploaded to an online database.
Continue reading...
Medicare data breach: government response ‘contemptible’, says former AFP officer
Nigel Phair says response to patient information being sold on dark web means fewer people ‘will trust government with their health details’
The federal government’s response to a Medicare data breach that led to patient details being sold on the dark web was “disappointing, confusing and often contemptible,” according to a former detective who headed the Australian federal police’s investigations into high-tech crime.
Nigel Phair, now an adjunct professor at the University of Canberra’s Centre for Internet Safety, told a Senate inquiry the government’s response to data breach concerns meant “less and less people will trust the government with their health details”.
Continue reading...
It’s official: Every Obamacare marketplace in the country has at least one insurer
The Ohio Department of Insurance announced Thursday that CareSource will sell Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans in Paulding County, officially marking the end of the health law’s empty counties problem. Every person looking to buy coverage on the ACA marketplace in Ohio and nationwide will have at least one health insurance option.
The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) has been tracking the state of counties that were at risk of having no insurer in 2018 at some point since Februar...
The Trump administration is ignoring these states’ questions about Obamacare enrollment
It’s late August, and state officials who work in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace in Nevada and Oregon say they still have not been contacted by their federal partners about open enrollment, which is slated to begin November 1. This is the latest testimony in a string of recent reports that suggest the president meant what he said when ACA repeal efforts in Congress failed last month: “let Obamacare implode.”
Nevada’s ACA health insurance marketplace avoi...