Faced with a choice between relying on the Obamacare website or consulting a Navigator who has undergone no background check or ongoing monitoring, which would you choose?

It seems as though the administration not only was initially uninterested in making the website or the Navigators safe in terms of security, it remains uninterested. Do they see lack of security as a feature, rather than a bug? Or maybe security’s just too darn expensive; they’d rather spend the money on advertising:

The Obama administration decided that Obamacare Navigators, tasked with helping Americans enroll in a health insurance plan, would not undergo mandatory background checks…

Yet the Obama administration still does not plan to implement a “secret shopper” program to monitor Navigators. HHS officials have put together “webinars” for Navigators, but they are voluntary and do not cover specific details.

The report also found that because the Obama administration did not warn Navigators that there could be problems with the HealthCare.Gov website, “Navigators were essentially useless” when the website crashed and had problems.

Of course, a person always could bypass the website entirely and use a paper application.

Then again:

The Committee found that this “push towards the use of paper applications further increases security risks, since health insurance exchange applications contain personally identifiable information such as the applicant’s full name, social security number, the names and social security numbers of everyone in the applicant’s household, and income for every member of the household.”

Over three years and umpteen gazillion dollars (no one really knows how much, but it was a lot) went into this. But hey, some of Obama’s favorite organizations got the plum Navigator jobs, so it’s all good.