Prepare for zero privacy: NSA spying is nothing compared to upcoming Obamacare data collection efforts

Sunday, July 21, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Obamacare, IRS, surveillance

(NaturalNews) The one thing you need to know about Obamacare above anything else is that it was not passed to lower your costs or improve healthcare services and delivery. Obamacare is about cradle-to-grave control, a surveillance state horror that even one-time supporters of the law are beginning to realize (though much too late).

Consider the provisions of this massive law that require collection of your personal information, all in the name of "streamlining" care and "reducing inefficiency." If you thought the NSA's spying was invasive, understand that Obamacare will completely wipe out the last vestiges of privacy in America.

Earlier this year the Health and Human Services Department, headed up by former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, tipped us off to just how vast the federal government's information collection efforts will be on millions of us, all via Obamacare. From Investors Business Daily:

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., asked HHS to provide "a complete list of agencies that will interact with the Federal Data Services Hub." The Hub is a central feature of Obamacare, since it will be used by the new insurance exchanges to determine eligibility for benefits, exemptions from the federal mandate, and how much to grant in federal insurance subsidies.

In response, the HHS said the Obamacare data hub will "interact" with seven other federal agencies: The Social Security Administration, the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, the Veterans Administration, Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Defense and - believe it or not - the Peace Corps. Plus the Hub will plug into state Medicaid databases.

'You can trust us with your information'

What kind of data, exactly, will be routed through this ubiquitous Hub? Oh, just everything about you - your income, Social Security number, size of your family, immigration status, whether or not you've even been incarcerated, and your enrollment status in other health plans, among other things, according to HHS.

"The federal government is planning to quietly enact what could be the largest consolidation of personal data in the history of the republic," writes Stephen Parente, a University of Minnesota finance professor. "If you think identity theft is a problem now, wait until Uncle Sam serves up critical information on 300 million American citizens on a platter."

Oh, but no worries, promises the imperial Obama Administration - the same one that has been spying on us for years and attacking us via the IRS, EPA and a dozen other federal bureaucracies. "The hub will not store consumer information, but will securely transmit data between state and federal systems to verify consumer application information," says an online government fact sheet (http://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Resources/Fact-Sheets-and-FAQs/ffe.html).

Sure; and there is coastline for sale in Arizona.

That lie was exposed by a regulatory notice quietly filed by the administration in February. Per Investors Business Daily:

That filing http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-02-06/html/2013-02666.htm) describes a new "system of records" that will store names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, taxpayer status, gender, ethnicity, email addresses, telephone numbers on the millions of people expected to apply for coverage at the Obamacare exchanges, as well as "tax return information from the IRS, income information from the Social Security Administration, and financial information from other third-party sources."

Obamacare - it's not about healthcare

And understand this: The main enforcement agency for Obamacare won't be HHS; it will be the IRS, for it is the government's tax agency to which you must report a) that you have obtained health insurance coverage, as required by the law; or b) that you haven't, in which case you will be penalized with a fine.

In addition, the government plans to store data from businesses that buy coverage through an exchange, including a "list of qualified employees and their tax ID numbers" - information that will be kept on file for a decade (at least).

If you still think Obamacare was about "reforming" - as in, making better - the nation's healthcare system, think again. From the beginning the law was designed to destroy your privacy and keep you under control - and to use your personal information to "manage" your care for the rest of your life.

Sources for this article include:

http://news.investors.com

http://www.usatoday.com

http://reason.com