Despite the hurdles, I still think on balance its worth going through whatever hassle you encounter to enroll. And I recommend, in any case, freezing your credit to avoid identity theft.
The threats are out there. United Healthcare (which covers some UC participants) has reported a large data breach, for example:
UnitedHealth Group said [last] Monday that hackers stole health and personal data of potentially a "substantial proportion" of Americans from its systems in February, as the largest U.S. health insurer scrambles to contain the damage.
The intrusion at its Change Healthcare unit, which processes about 50% of U.S. medical claims, was one of the worst hacks to hit American healthcare and caused widespread disruption in payment to doctors and health facilities.
The disclosure suggests patients' healthcare information remains vulnerable. An initial review of the compromised data showed files with protected health information or personally identifiable information "which could cover a substantial proportion of people in America," the company said in a statement on its website.
That theft on Feb. 21 occurred despite a ransom payment...
Full story from Reuters at https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/unitedhealth-says-hack-could-impact-data-substantial-proportion-americans-2024-04-22/.
And if you don't gete coverage from United Healthcare, perhaps you do get it from Kaiser:
Health insurance giant Kaiser Permanente apologized to 13.4 million of its members that some of their search information may have been inadvertently transmitted to Google, other search engines and media platforms...
Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-26/kaiser-permanente-notifies-13-4-million-members-of-data-breach.
To sum it all up, we all could be at risk:
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