New bill would demand detailed HealthCare.gov data

Nebraska Republican Rep. Lee Terry, a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is pushing a proposal that would require the government to disclose detailed traffic statistics for visitors to HealthCare.gov.

The measure would put the onus on the government to release information on unique visits to the site, the number of chat sessions initiated with online navigators who help visitors use it, the number of users who actually enrolls in a private health plan or Medicaid, and the level of coverage selected.

Additionally, Terry's bill looks to put a price tag on the cost of the "tech surge" being conducted to fix the site, precise information on the problems being fixed, and the names of federal officials managing the process. The bill breaks down problem areas including logging in to the site, enrolling in an insurance plan, calculating premium support subsidies, the various identity and income verification steps, and privacy protection. The disclosures would be made to Congress, state insurance commissioners and to the public.

"The administration has already demonstrated that they're not going to volunteer any information that could further embarrass the president," Terry wrote in a Nov. 20 op-ed for Investor's Business Daily.

The administration is offering reporters updates on tech surge developments in regular conference calls with a spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. These calls have in the past included project leader Jeff Zients. So far, CMS has reported working through more than 200 individual fixes on a "punch list" of problems, most recently improving the way HealthCare.gov reports enrollment information to insurance carriers. The administration has pledged to get the site working smoothly for the "vast majority" of users by the end of November.