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 In a memo to his fellow House Republicans, Cantor said he would
schedule floor action next week on proposals to make the healthcare
website safer as well as notify consumers when their personal
information has been compromised.
Cantor noted that several bills on the topic of the website's
security had already been introduced by Republicans.
The website HealthCare.gov allows consumers to shop for insurance
plans under President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, which
passed in 2010 and mandated that Americans have health insurance. It
also created new marketplaces to buy insurance plans.
The website collects personal data such as names, birth dates, email
addresses and other information that criminals could use for a
variety of scams.
The portal was bedeviled by technical glitches after its October 1
launch. But in recent weeks its performance has improved, and the
administration announced on Tuesday that more than 2 million people
already had enrolled in private health insurance plans offered under
the law, which is popularly called Obamacare.
Some technology experts warned Congress in November that the
Obamacare website had so many security flaws that it was putting
people's data at risk and should be shut down until it is fixed.
An administration spokesman responding to Cantor's memo said
Thursday that security on the website was a top priority and was
protected by stringent standards as well as ongoing testing.
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"To date, there have been no successful security attacks on
HealthCare.gov and no person or group has maliciously accessed
personally identifiable information from the site," Aaron Albright,
a spokesman at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which was in
charge of launching HealthCare.gov.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement that
Republicans appeared intent on undermining the Affordable Care Act — even if it meant "scaring their constituents from obtaining health
coverage."
Cantor said that in the coming weeks the House of Representatives
would also address other areas where he said greater transparency is
needed on Obama's healthcare program, "including the disclosure of
reliable and complete enrollment data."
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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