While Americans nationwide find themselves stonewalled as they attempt to register in Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) claimed that a hearing attempting to examine the problems surrounding healthcare.gov was a simply a “monkey court.”
The House Energy and Commerce Committee gaveled in a hearing Thursday morning on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the glitches plaguing the federal exchange’s website, healthcare.gov. But while a host of witnesses representing the various contractors tasked with building the site testified, two lawmakers engaged in a heated exchange, with Pallone going so far as to call the hearing “a monkey court.”
“So once again here we have my Republican colleagues trying to scare everybody hoping …” Pallone said before he was asked to yield to Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas). “No, I will not yield to this monkey court or whatever this thing is. Do whatever you want, I’m not yielding.”
The New Jersey Democrat was referring to questions previously asked by Barton. The Texas Republican inquired about a line of source code buried in healthcare.gov’s terms and conditions that stated, “You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data transiting or stored on this information system.”
Barton argued the code was a violation of HIPPA regulations — the laws that protect a patients’ health records — but Pallone disagreed, saying the code had nothing to do with HIPPA and was simply a scare tactic used by his Republican colleagues.
“HIPPA doesn’t apply,” Pallone said. “There’s no information in the process. You’re asking about your address, your date of birth. There is no health information. So why are we going down this path? Because you’re trying to scare people so they don’t apply.”
Watch the exchange below.
