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HHS Sued Over Healthcare.gov Records

Healthcare.gov / AP

Judicial Watch is suing the Department of Health and Human Services on behalf of journalist Sharyl Attkisson for records regarding the rollout of Healthcare.gov.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services failed to respond to four FOIA requests Attkisson sent between October 2013 and June 2014.

The Judicial Watch lawsuit on behalf of Attkisson seeks to discover records needed to establish accountability for the disastrous rollout, including the internal decision-making procedures used by top HHS officials. On the day of the Healthcare.gov launch, CMS Administrator, Marilyn Tavenner, responded to questions from the press regarding enrollment numbers by saying, "We have just decided not to release that yet." The process for making the decision to withhold those numbers is included in Attkisson’s FOIA request and subsequent suit.

Attkisson summarized the lawsuit on her website:

From the moment Health and Human Services falsely denied it was tracking enrollment numbers in the early disastrous days of HealthCare.gov, to HHS keeping secret the details of the security risks it discovered prior to–and after–the website’s launch, to HHS excluding journalists from viewing–but inviting favored private interests to view–the repair operations in progress, I’ve been seeking much of this undeniably public information.

Published under: HHS , Obamacare