Oversight Committee Presses Tech Companies for Answers on HealthCare.gov Effort that White House is Witholding

WASHINGTON – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., today announced letters to five technology companies asking for more information about their involvement, if any, in the effort to fix the many problems with Healthcare.gov. The letters were sent to Verizon Enterprise Inc., Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Expedia, and are the first of an ongoing inquiry.

The Obama Administration has announced it is “bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government” to fix the seemingly endless problems with the healthcare exchange website, but has not provided details about what the problems are, who is being enlisted to solve them and how long the process is expected to take.

“Despite the President’s assertion that ‘we’re well into a “tech surge”’ neither the White House nor HHS is providing additional details about which private sector companies have been engaged or whether they are being engaged through the appropriate procurement processes,” Chairman Issa writes.

“The Committee seeks your company’s cooperation in an effort to obtain important information about the problems plaguing HealthCare.gov and efforts to address them that the Administration has so far refused to divulge,” the letter continues.

Given the lack of answers from the Administration, the requests include all communication between the companies and CMS, HHS, the Office of Management and Budget, or the Executive Office of the President since October 1, 2013.

You can read a copy of one of the letters here.