The House Energy and Commerce Committee is investigating the Obama administration’s decision to delay provisions of Obamacare requiring health insurance exchanges to verify eligibility of those applying for subsidies, the committee announced in a letter Tuesday afternoon.
The letter, addressed to Secretary of Health and Human Service Kathleen Sebelius, follows several letters from the committee investigating the administration’s decision last week to delay the employer mandate.
"Both the HHS final rule and the Treasury announcement [delaying the employer mandate] raise troubling questions about the status of the administration’s efforts to implement the PPACA and to what extent the exchanges will be operational by the time enrollment begins on Oct. 1, 2013," wrote the congressmen. Fifteen members of the committee signed the letter.
"The administration has had three years to implement PPACA, yet in the span of just three days, two agencies have used administrative actions to significantly change fundamental requirements of the law," the congressmen wrote. "As we wrote to you in a letter dated July 3, 2013, these announcements are completely at odds with the public statements of administration officials."
The committee members ask in the letter when the discussions to delay the law’s provisions began. They also request information about what, if any, procedures will be in place to compensate for the delays.
The letter is just the latest outcry against the administration’s implementation of Obamacare since they decided to delay the employer mandate last Tuesday.
Some see the delays and waivers as a sign of the law’s unraveling. Healthcare experts have pointed to the law’s complexity as a reason for the administration’s trouble in implementing it.
House leaders sent a letter earlier on Tuesday to President Barack Obama asking for information about why his administration delayed the employer mandate and asking that he also delay the individual mandate, which is set to begin Jan. 1, 2014.
The Energy and Commerce Committee has scheduled a hearing on the delays for July 18. A subcommittee of the House Ways and Means committee will also hold a hearing on Wednesday July 10 to look into why the administration delayed the employer mandate.