Secret attempt to build National Healthcare Database already underway?

ALERT: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), a branch of the Health & Human Services department of the federal government, is requiring employers under stiff penalites to gather and report all employee social security numbers, PLUS the SSNs of their SPOUSES and CHILDREN. Normally, an employer does not have the SSNs of an employee's family members as most health care benefits are paid under the employee's SSN. This "mandatory reporting" requirement began as a test mode earlier this year and is underway NOW.

There is a lot more detail about this regulation, but it is not only a violation of privacy and (possibly) SSN rules, it may be a disguised method for building the National Healthcare Databasethat the Obama administration has been talking about without allowing any national discussion or input from We The People.

Read more about the new MMSEA 111 regulation being implemented NOW, here at the CMS site.

Additionally, CMS is conducting a teleconference TODAY, June 4th, from 1pm to 3pm EST. As soon as I get the phone number, I will post it here on my blog, plus I'll announce it on Twitter and Facebook.

800-779-4354 - read the instructions HERE.*

THIS IS WRONG. We all must protest this activity NOW. I am in the process of contacting various news outlets to bring attention to this issue, but I need your help.

Here is my email I am using, and I encourage you to use this if you wish to contact your representatives and news outlets, too:

TODAY at 1pm EST, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) is conducting a teleconference call to explain to employers and insurers the NEW mandatory regs on collecting Social Security Numbers of not only covered employees in group plans, but their SPOUSES and their CHILDREN to be submitted quarterly to the CMS office through third party contractors.

I learned about this when the human resources department at my husband's employer contacted him via email requesting my SSN, although I am not an employee. I didn't want them to have my SSN nor access to my health records, so I investigated this and discovered that although this new regulation, called "MMSEA 111," is supposedly to identify group health participants who are also eligible for Medicare (I am not)--to reportedly stop Medicare fraud--but it could easily be a secret effort to set up a National Healthcare Database without public knowledge or consent.

This requires employers to throw a wide net to gather SSNs of spouses and children which they don't normally have in their records since benefits are usually paid under the employee's SSN--and as I mentioned, it shifts the burdern of verifying Medicare recipients from the public to the private sector and may be the first step toward a NATIONAL HEALTHCARE DATABASE.

NO ONE in the media is talking about this. The process started late last year and the additions to Medicare regulation was signed just a few months ago at the end of December 2008, and is being implemented RIGHT NOW.

I am not eligible for Medicare, nor does anyone in my family receive Medicare benefits, so therefore, we should NOT have to turn over our SSNs to my husband's employer nor to CMS! This is a violation of our privacy rights and our right to protect our own SSNs. My husband is upset at me now, because he fears losing his job over not giving up my SSN (top management there do not like what they perceive to be "troublemakers"). But this is wrong.

PLEASE FOLLOW UP ON THIS STORY.

Here is a direct link to this information at CMS: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/MandatoryInsRep/

The next deadline for employers to comply with this new regulation is July 1st, just a few weeks away, during this initial "testing" phase in gathering and transferring all of these SSNs from employers to third party contractors who will then forward it to CMS.

Please help dig out the details of this massive collection of employee's families' private information, which includes the name, SSN, date of birth, and gender. This is gross example of a federal agency shifting the burden of verifying Medicare recipients--which is the agency's responsibility--to the private sector. But more insidiously, this may be a "behind-the-scenes" effort to build that National Healthcare Database without public discussion and voter participation.

Again, the teleconference is TODAY, June 4th, from 1pm to 3pm EST (800-779-4354).

I have a background as a human resources director and benefits specialist, so I understand the issues at stake. I welcome your questions and urge you to get this information out to the public as quickly as possible.

Sincerely,

Kimn Swenson Gollnick

* (PLEASE NOTE: If you join the teleconference, I suggest that you do so to listen only. I do not advise nor condone turning it into a protest, but to use it as a way to gather more information on this new regulation and to monitor the government's actions.)