Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) laid out in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News at the Iowa Freedom Summit the biggest coming scandal of 2015: That the Obama administration is allowing corporations to data mine from healthcare.gov.
“We finally have confirmation—I had anecdotal evidence on that when healthcare.gov started up,” Blackburn said. “They denied, denied, denied. Now we have confirmation that yes, indeed, that what healthcare.gov has done is allowed data mining. What we’re trying to find out now—and we’re investigating—did they make money? Did they sell your data? Who got the money? What pool did that money go to? Did that come back into taxpayer funds? Or, have companies been given free access?”
Blackburn, the vice chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said congressional hearings are in the works right now, too. “Absolutely, you’re going to see hearings on this,” she said, “because the federal government first and foremost has to protect your data.”
Blackburn, a conservative Republican from Nashville, Tennessee, was one of the U.S. House members at the conference that featured several potential 2016 GOP presidential candidates.
Blackburn is someone in Congress who can pull many Republicans from different sides of the party in her direction on an issue, and her keen interest in this Obamacare data mining scandal seems to indicate it will become a big deal moving forward.
“It is totally outrageous,” Blackburn said. “The federal government—think about it like this. They mandate that you go to this website, and that you enter your personal identifying information, healthcare information and sensitive data into this repository. Your file, if you will, at this website.
“Then they transit that website to the IRS, to the Department of Homeland Security, they transit it outside to verify your income and all this information and then they sell it to insurance brokers our outside companies who are going to call you up and try to sell you their product.”
Blackburn said it’s a “huge” crony capitalist system, and they’ve got “all this personal data about all these people who have to buy an insurance product.”
“Somebody is making money off of you,” Blackburn said.
Earlier the week before the Iowa Freedom Summit, the Associated Press broke a story that revealed serious data mining concerns with the Obamacare website. Some top line findings from the AP article are that data firms may be tracking people as they use the healthcare website and that there were multiple connections to third-party technology firms confirmed by the AP.
“A little-known side to the government’s health insurance website is prompting renewed concerns about privacy, just as the White House is calling for stronger cybersecurity protections for consumers,” the AP wrote. “It works like this: When you apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, dozens of data companies may be able to tell that you are on the site. Some can even glean details such as your age, income, ZIP code, whether you smoke or if you are pregnant.”
The AP also wrote that the so-called “data firms” have “embedded connections on the government site,” and “ever-evolving technology allows for individual Internet users to be tracked, building profiles that are a vital tool for advertisers.”
“Connections to multiple third-party tech firms were documented by technology experts who analyzed HealthCare.gov, and confirmed by The Associated Press,” the AP wrote. “There is no evidence that personal information from HealthCare.gov has been misused, but the number of outside connections is raising questions.”
This weekend, the AP followed up with another story detailing how the Obama administration has now “reversed course Friday and scaled back the release of personal information from HealthCare.gov.” The AP noted that the Obama administration’s decision to back off using Obamacare-mined data for corporate sales purposes seemed to have come in response to its original investigation.
When asked by Breitbart News if she thinks this will be the biggest scandal of 2015 when all this information comes out in congressional hearings, Blackburn said: “You’re right.”
“Now we know they’re doing it,” Blackburn said. “Now we know.”
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