Just Who Are These Navigators?

Grace-Marie Turner at Forbes:

No-background-check“In totality, the information gathered by the [House Oversight] Committee shows that the Administration never seriously considered required background checks for Navigators and Assisters or prohibiting individuals with serious criminal backgrounds from obtaining access to sensitive consumer information,” the report says. The administration made a deliberate decision not to require Federal background checks, [Gary Cohen, the director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at HHS] said, because they also want “Navigators to serve certain communities which may be unwilling to do that if they have to go through a background check and fingerprinting.”

Comments (12)

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  1. Mike says:

    “Navigators to serve certain communities which may be unwilling to do that if they have to go through a background check and fingerprinting.”

    Unwilling? Sorry bud, there are plenty of others who are seeking employment.

  2. Preston says:

    Get ready for a spike in identity theft!

  3. Chris says:

    When are we going to learn that politicians aren’t very good business men and women?

    Leave this kind of work to be done by companies.

  4. John Fembup says:

    I live in Connecticut, one of the few states that elected to set up its own Exchange.

    Navigators in Connecticut are organizations, not individuals. Each county has one designated Navigator. A Navigator may cover more than one county. I don’t know if that’s what other state Exchanges are doing

    I think it makes sense for the states, not the feds, to do Navigator credentialing because the Navigators are state-based organizations and are chosen by the state.

    In turn, the Navigators hire individuals who (they say) they are training to assist people to understand their options, and to help them enroll.

    • Crawford says:

      I like your thinking, Mr. Fembup. But the one navigator per country works in some places. Cook County-IL and Wayne County-MI, on the other hand, will need to deploy few platoons of these ‘navigators’.

  5. PJ says:

    The report cites news articles that describe citizens who “reportedly have been threatened with prison time if they do not sign up for coverage on the spot.”