Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange and nine other state attorneys general yesterday sent a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius asking her and the Obama Administration to support legislation to mitigate what Strange’s office referred to as “systemic implementation problems” with ObamaCare.
The five-page letter from Strange and the other AG’s focused on three main issues with the president’s healthcare law: delays, technological difficulties, and the security of consumers’ private information.
“Attorneys General work day in and day out to protect consumers, and so far, the implementation of ObamaCare has been a disaster for people all across the country,” Attorney General Strange said. “I hope the Obama administration and members of Congress will work together on legislation to fix the mounting problems with the law that the failed rollout has highlighted.”
The letter touched on several provisions of the controversial law that have already been delayed, including the cap on consumers’ out-of-pocket expenses, the small business health insurance exchange, and the mandate requiring large employers to provide health insurance. The Obama administration also postponed the date by which individuals have to buy insurance or face a penalty.
The second set of concerns the AGs mentioned in their letter focused on the problems with the month-old Healthcare.gov website.
Shortly after the site’s launch, reports revealed that only six people registered the first day it was operational. The site has since then been plagued by severe technical issues and long outages. Individuals trying to get insurance through the site have also reported problems like duplicate enrollments, spouses reported as children, and missing data fields.
On top of all that, the attorneys general said their biggest worry is still the privacy and security of consumers’ information. The letter highlighted the abundance of cyber security red flags that experts have pointed out, including the website’s inability to block third-party access to “cookies” containing personal information.
“We have many serious concerns about the implementation of the ACA so far. We hope Congress and the Administration will take immediate steps to mitigate these problems,” Strange said.
In addition to Alabama, the letter was signed by the Attorneys General of West Virginia, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.
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