And this is why Darrell Issa wants you to watch Fox
The Fox is guarding the henhouse,
literally:
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) on Monday told Dr. Randy Farris, a Texas health administrator for the federal government, to watch more Fox News after the health official did not satisfactorily answer Issa's questions about HealthCare.Gov, according to the Dallas Morning News.
"You need to watch more Fox News, I'm afraid," Issa retorted after Farris claimed that consumers' personal information was not stored on the health exchange website.
But as amusing as it is to see a clown like Issa to offer up Fox as a serious source of information, it turns out there's a serious issue here, one which Issa demonstrated himself later in the day when he appeared on—you guessed it, Fox (transcript via NEXIS):
HANNITY: Congressman Issa, I'll start with you. Would you -- based on what you know about the security or lack thereof of the Web site and the navigators, would you recommend anybody go to that Web site, sign on, give personal information, or is that a mistake?
ISSA: I think the longer somebody waits before they go on within the mandate of the law, they're doing themselves a service because they can -- the site can only get better as they're fixing it. On day one, you couldn't have gotten on, if you wanted to. Today, I'm still very concerned about your personal information.
So if you took Darrell Issa's advice and watched more Fox News, what you'd get is is a big dose of fear mongering—and it would come from none other than Issa himself. The thing that's so insidious about his remarks is that he sounds like he's trying to protect people, but what he's really doing is trying to sabotage Obamacare by scaring people away from it.
It would be one thing if there were any evidence of an identify theft epidemic involving HealthCare.gov, but there isn't. There's no such thing as perfect security, but the risk of foregoing health insurance far outweighs the risk of signing up for it, whether you're doing it on HealthCare.gov, through a state exchange, or through your employer.
Darrell Issa might not be Earth's brightest bulb, but he's surely smart enough understand this, which means his remarks amount to nothing more than a calculated effort to discourage people who don't have health insurance from getting coverage. That's not just a political dirty trick, it's immoral.