Now Let us Praise New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone 4 calling-out GOP demagoguery in ACA website hearing
The Energy and Commerce committee has provided GOPers ample time to grill administration representatives involved in setting-up and or designing the beleagered ACA Federal web-site. GOPers who spent the last 3 years fighting the ACA and voting unsuccessfully to repeal it 48 times now seem to be overwhelmed with concern that people won't be able to get signed up for the program which Mitch MFer McConnell has called the ACA the "single-worst piece of legislation passed in the last 50 years.".
But, finally, somebody had enough. Last Thursday, Representative Frank Pallone, N.J., couldn't take the political theater anymore.... Rep Pallone unleashed his disgust on Rep. Joe Barton of Texas for pursuing a typically demagogic, (and hopefully headline grabbing) irrelevant line of cross examination of an administration representative before the committee. Praise the lord for honest talking men like Rep. Pallone of New Jersey.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/10/congressman-lashes-out-about-healthcaregov-hearing-monkey-court/70896/
Decorum broke down during the contentious House hearing over the buggy Healthcare.gov website on Thursday morning. Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas charged the witnesses with a violation of the law; New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone pushed back, calling the hearing a "monkey court."
Barton's critique focused on a portion of the source code of the insurance exchange website. In the code, Barton pointed out, is a line reading, "You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data transiting or stored on this information system." Barton asked the witness from CGI Federal how that stipulation could be compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. That law set strict rules around sharing personal health information.
"How in the world can this be HIPAA compliant," Barton asked, "when HIPAA is designed to protect the patient's privacy and this explicitly says in order to continue you have to accept this condition that you have no privacy — no reasonable expectation of privacy?"
There are several ways in which Barton's analysis is incorrect. The first is that Barton says the language is "hidden" — because it's in the source code. "Source code," for those who don't know, is the tagged language that tells a browser how to display a website. It's "hidden" only because it's information about the web page, not the content of the page itself. Meaning it doesn't show up on the page, meaning that there's no way it could even be legally enforceable.
(Then Representative Pallone had had enough: )
[div class="excerpt" style="background:#FFCCCC;"]Pallone: I started out in my opening statement saying there was no legitimacy to this hearing and the last line of the questioning certainly confirms is that.
HIPAA only applies when there's health information being provided. That's not in play here today. No health information is required in the application process. And why is that? Because pre-existing conditions don't matter! So once again, here we have my Republican colleagues trying to scare everybody —
Barton, interrupting: If the gentleman will yield?
Pallone: No, I will not yield to this monkey court or whatever —
Barton: This is not a monkey court!
(more)
