Myth Buster: Individuals and families that enroll in a qualified health plan through the ACA's new marketplaces will have their personally identifiable information collected and stored in a central database controlled by the federal government.

MYTH:  When individuals and families enroll in a qualified health plan through the new marketplaces under the Affordable Care Act, their personally identifiable information is being collected and stored in a large, central database controlled by the federal government. 

FACT:  Personally identifiable information collected by the marketplaces is used determine an applicant’s eligibility for enrollment in a plan, as well as subsidies and exemptions if applicable, and the state and federal governments are not creating a massive federal database containing this information.

The Affordable Care Act's Health Insurance marketplaces allow a majority of enrollments into Qualified Health Plans to occur online, digitizing this personal information and requiring it to travel via the internet.  These changes have given rise to concerns about what exactly the government (state or federal) is doing with the information that applicants must submit in order to enroll in a plan through a marketplace. To learn more about how personally identifiable information collected by the marketplaces is actually used, please read our Myth Buster below.