Health Department Bars Insurance Aids

The Miami Herald reported on September 11th 2013 that Florida government officials created another hurdle to the new health insurance marketplace, which opens in Florida on Oct. 1. Citing "privacy concerns" health department officials explicitly prohibit outreach workers known as navigators to assist and support eligible Floridians to sign up for health insurance. The order from Deputy Health Secretary C. Meade Grigg went out late Monday to the 60 local health department directors across the state emphasizing that the outreach workers intend to collect consumer information that will be gathered for use in a federal database which is, according to the underlying "thought process" of the health department officials, inherently unsafe. Health and Human Services Department spokesman Fabien Levy called the Florida directive “another blatant and shameful attempt to intimidate groups who will be working to inform Americans about their new health insurance options and help them enroll in coverage, just like Medicare counselors have been doing for years.” In a Miami Herald editorial titled " Rubbing salt into the wound" the authors characterized the state officials action as "outrageous and spiteful" and emphasized that this " will not prevent those who need help with healthcare insurance from getting it, but it will make it harder for them to do so. It represents a unilateral and shameful denial of service by the state to its own citizens." Furthermore, the editorial pointed out that "it strains credulity to believe that privacy is a practical concern. In the first place, virtually all Americans — anyone who contributes to Social Security, pays taxes to the IRS, is a veteran of the armed forces or otherwise has any contact with the federal government — is already in a federal database of one sort or another without privacy becoming a serious concern." Florida state officials also seem to ignore that U.S. Health and Human Services officials have stated unequivocally that “consumers will never be asked to provide their personal health information to the (insurance) Marketplace, whether through a Navigator or not.” This shameful action taken by the Florida government is intended to sacrifice the health and well being ( maybe even lives) of almost 4 million uninsured Floridians on the altar of ideological purity. If health department officials still have a conscience then they should resign in protest. Otherwise, they are nothing but spineless bureaucrats working for a government which ignores the needs and rights of its own citizen. Shame on you!! Yours Bernd