HealthCare.Gov website has experienced a data breach where roughly 75,000 individuals were exposed, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service (CMS) said on Friday.
According to the agency, they said that “anomalous system activity” was detected last week in the Direct Enrollment system. This is the system that American us to enroll in healthcare plans via insurance exchange established under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). By Wednesday, it was declared that a breach had occurred.
At this time, it’s not clear why the agency decided to not disclose the breach sooner.
“I want to make clear to the public that HealthCare.gov and the Marketplace Call Center are still available, and open enrollment will not be negatively impacted,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. “We are working to identify the individuals potentially impacted as quickly as possible so that we can notify them and provide resources such as credit protection.”
The portal system is used by insurance agents and brokers to assist Americans in signing up for coverage. Currently, it’s known that this is the only system that was compromised and that no other systems were affected. This section of the system has been closed off, temporarily, and officials said that they hope to have it live again before the end of next week.
“It is important to note that CMS is in the beginning stages of the assessment of this breach,” CMS said. “This is an evolving situation and we will continue to provide additional information.”
