Rep. Joe Barton sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius thanking her for her promise to protect privacy on HealthCare.gov.
Rep. Joe Barton, co-Chairman of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus and Chairman Emeritus of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius thanking her for her promise to protect privacy on HealthCare.gov. He also asked for notification once controversial language was removed from the site’s coding.
At a House Energy and Commerce Hearing on October 30th titled, “PPACA Implementation Failures: Answers from HHS,” Rep. Barton reiterated his desire to see questionable privacy waiver language removed from HealthCare.gov’s source code. Secretary Sebelius admitted it was there in error and promised to have it removed.
“It is my understanding that that is boiler plate language that should have not been in this particular contract because there are the highest security standards in place and people have every right to expect privacy,” Sec. Sebelius said at the hearing. “I do absolutely commit to protecting the privacy of the American public and we have asked them to remove that statement. It is there in error. It needs to be taken down and we should be held accountable for protecting privacy.”
The Congressman wrote in the letter that he was appreciative of her promise.
“I would like to thank you for assuring myself and the members on the Committee that you not only value the right to privacy for every American, but that you and members of your staff are working on removing the privacy language found in the source code. I am happy to hear that this text was placed in the source code in error and that it should have never been there in the first place,” wrote Rep. Barton.
The letter goes on to ask that the Congressman be notified once the coding has been removed.
