The Trump administration inadvertently exposed the Social Security numbers of health care providers in a database powering a new Medicare portal, according to The Washington Post.
Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., is up in arms over the news.
The Post reported Thursday that it downloaded a database created by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services last year to help seniors look up which doctors and medical providers accept which insurance plans "and identified at least dozens of Social Security numbers belonging to health care providers while reviewing a sample of rows."
The publicly accessible database used to populate the directory "contains some of the providers' Social Security numbers, linked to their names and other identifying information," the Post reported. "For at least several weeks, CMS made the database available for public use as part of its data transparency efforts. The files are not immediately visible to users who visit the provider directory."
Neal, ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee, said Friday in a statement: "Enough is enough. The more we learn about how the Trump Administration handles the people's most sensitive data, the clearer their incompetence becomes. Ways and Means Democrats have been sounding the alarm for well over a year, only to be ignored and utterly dismissed by House Republicans. Now, we learn the Trump Administration didn't even realize it was advertising the Social Security numbers of Medicare providers in their latest half-baked database until they were told by the Washington Post."
Added Neal: "If that's not enough to compel House Republicans to investigate, what will it take?"
CMS, according to the Post, "did not respond to questions about how many providers' Social Security numbers were exposed, whether it had notified the individual providers and other details about the incident."
The Post states that it "informed health officials on Tuesday that the numbers had been exposed, giving the agency time to take down the database, and contacted some of the affected providers, who said they were confused and concerned."
CMS officials, the Post reported, "said they are working to fix the problem that led to the exposure. A spokesperson said the problem 'stems from incorrect entries of provider or provider representative-supplied information in the wrong places' — essentially, that providers entered information in the wrong place and left their own Social Security numbers exposed."
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.