WASHINGTON - The Republican-led House voted overwhelmingly Friday to attach new security requirements to President Barack Obama’s health-care law, with 67 Democrats breaking ranks to join with the GOP.
Meanwhile, the administration said it was parting ways with the lead outside contractor for the sign-up website, which had to be rebuilt after its disastrous launch last fall.
The vote was 291-122 with Republicans relentlessly focusing on the health law, convinced that Americans’ unease with the law will translate into significant election gains in November. The four representatives from Arkansas, all Republicans, voted in favor of the security requirements.
“Americans have the right to know if the president’s health-care law has put their personal information at risk, and today’s bipartisan vote reflects that concern,” said Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
Among the Democrats joining the Republicans was Rep. Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of his party’s campaign committee dedicated to electing Democrats.
“I voted for this bill because I want to make sure confidential information is protected. That’s just common sense,” Israel said in a statement. “This is an added consumer safeguard on top of the many consumer protections in the law that already exist.”
The bill would require the secretary of health and human services to notify an individual within two business days of any security breach involving personal data provided to the government through the health-care website healthcare.gov.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday that the administration opposes the measure as an unnecessary and costly burden. He said the government already has imposed stringent security standards, uses sensors and other tools to deter unauthorized access and conducts regular testing. He said Americans will be notified if personal information has been compromised.
On Capitol Hill, Republicans said their legislation on the overhaul addressed potential security breaches, though they offered no specific examples of compromised information to this point. Instead, they pointed to the recent security breach at Target Corp.
The nation’s second-largest retailer said Friday that personal information connected to about 70 million customers through credit and debit-card accounts had been stolen in a pre-Christmas data breach.
“What if Target had not bothered to tell anyone?” asked Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., who argued that the Health and Human Services Department’s promise to notify Americans of security breaches needed the force of law.
But Democrats said there had been no breaches at the health-care website. The bill was simply a Republican effort to “put fear into the public,” according to Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J.
Rep. Diane DeGette, D-Colo., described the legislation as a “solution in search of a problem.”
There was at least one breach last year. A North Carolina man tried to log onto the website and got a South Carolina man’s personal information. The administration had to scramble to make a software fix.
The goal of the Patient Protect Affordable Care Act is to expand coverage to tens of millions of Americans who lack insurance, to lower health-care costs, to increase access to preventive services and to eliminate some of the pre-existing condition requirements that insurance companies have used to deny coverage. The health-care website got off to a calamitous start Oct. 1, followed quickly by widespread reports of canceled policies and higher premiums.
To date, more than 2 million Americans have signed up for coverage through the federal marketplace covering 36 states and separate exchanges in 14 states. At the same time, at least 4.7 million people who buy their own insurance were told their policies would no longer be offered this year because they failed to meet the standards of the law.
The Obama administration and lead website contractor CGI Federal said Friday that they had mutually agreed to part ways on healthcare.gov. The site’s launch Oct. 1 prompted a frantic reconstruction campaign. It largely works well now.
Government officials had little to say.
CGI’s current contract will not be renewed after February, a person familiar with the situation said Friday. The person requested anonymity because of federal rules regarding the privacy of contractors.
Instead, the administration intends to hire Accenture, a major technology consulting company, to run the federal website serving 36 states.
CGI spokesman Linda Odorisio said in a statement that the company played a key role in turning the website around and that it remains a federal contractor on other health-care projects.
Also Friday, the Treasury Department said in a blog post that volunteer firefighters and other emergency responders won’t be considered employees in its final regulations and therefore won’t require coverage under the federal healthcare law.
Volunteer firefighters have been considered employees for tax purposes because they’re often offered such incentives as stipends, retirement benefits and gym memberships.
Information for this article was contributed by Darlene Superville, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Alanna Durkin of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 01/11/2014