A bill to authorize the Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation to establish a commemorative work in the District of Columbia and its environs, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I am afraid the bill before the House today, H.R. 3362, the Exchange Information Disclosure Act, is simply an effort by Republicans to continue to impede the efforts of the administration to implement the Affordable Care Act.

Transparency and enrollment information is important for Members of this body to receive. But this bill's requirements on the Secretary go way above and beyond what I think is necessary and valuable information. This is just an attempt to pile so many requirements on the administration that they are taking away from the true job of enrolling people in the law.

Enrollment numbers and visitors to the site are important pieces of information, and we certainly all know that, but this bill is simply unnecessary. There is already extensive disclosure of data on health insurance enrollments being provided. The administration releases enrollment data monthly, just like they do with Medicare and the children's health insurance program and other Federal programs. The monthly HHS enrollment reports are excellent, detailed reports. In fact, the newest HHS monthly enrollment report, which was issued this Monday, which covers enrollment through December, has even more extensive data than the two earlier monthly reports.

Mr. Speaker, in addition to providing data on total enrollments nationally

and in the States, the latest report includes data both for the Nation and the States on, first, greater breakdown of those who have selected marketplace plans; second, age breakdown--I stress, age breakdown--of those who have selected marketplace plans; third, financial assistance status of those who have selected marketplace plans; and, lastly, a breakdown of the coverage level--or metal level--of the plans people have selected.

So these numbers show that there is a very strong demand for the quality, affordable coverage options now available to Americans because of the Affordable Care Act. More than 6 million Americans have now either signed up for a private health insurance plan or for Medicaid, including the nearly 2.2 million who signed up for private insurance through the marketplace. Nearly 1.8 million of these consumers signed up for private plans in December, and that is nearly five times as many people as signed up in October and November combined.

Frankly, Mr. Speaker, I am encouraged and excited by these numbers. Americans aren't going to the Web site because they are forced to, like the Republicans claim. They are going to the Web site because they want and need access to health insurance. This should be no surprise. Thirty percent--nearly one in three--of people who have enrolled in a marketplace plan are younger than age 35; 24 percent are between 18 and 34 years old; and there was a more than eightfold increase in December enrollments in the Federal marketplace. In addition, more than 3 million young adults have gained coverage because the Affordable Care Act allows them to stay on their parents' plan until they turn 26. So we are getting more of the younger people as well.

Meanwhile, healthcare.gov and State Web sites have received more than 53 million visits, and State and Federal call centers have received more than 11 million calls.

The administration has committed to release this information monthly, the way they have done with every other Federal program to date. So I am sorry to say that I simply do not believe this is a serious effort in any sense of the word by Republicans. This bill is nothing but a weak effort to smear the law.

I urge Members to oppose the bill. There are only so many resources out there. Why would we want HHS to have to provide this excessive information? I would rather they spent their time trying to enroll people, doing more outreach, and encouraging people to sign up so that they actually have health insurance.

So again, Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to oppose this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina, G.K. Butterfield, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Sarbanes), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Speaker, may I just ask how much time remains.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to my colleague from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews), who has spent so much effort in passing and drafting the Affordable Care Act.

(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).

Mr. Speaker, again, this GOP bill is designed to harass the Department, preventing it from doing its job. It is an unworkable, unnecessary bill that places onerous, unrealistic, and costly reporting requirements on HHS, with no benefit to the general public.

I heard my colleagues say over and over again, Oh, nobody is going to enroll. Now people are enrolling, and they say they want to know whether they paid or not.

Where does it end? Why don't you spend your time trying to get people to enroll, trying to give people information and do more outreach so people actually are able to get health insurance? That is what we are trying to do with the Affordable Care Act--make people who don't have insurance get insurance, make people who do have it, have it more affordable and have a better benefit package.

All these things are wonderful. This is what people want. That is why so many people are, in fact, signing up. And I just cannot help but think that this is nothing but another effort to make it more burdensome, to scare people to make it less likely that people actually enroll.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to mention that the administration opposed the bill. The administration said that they oppose the passage because it would require unfunded, unprecedented, and unnecessary reporting requirements that exceed those of other public and private programs.

I urge a ``no'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 3362.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 455, I call up the bill (H.R. 3362) to amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to require transparency in the operation of American Health Benefit Exchanges, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3362, the Exchange Information Disclosure Act. This bill is fundamentally about transparency. Since healthcare.gov's disastrous launch, the public has received confusing and conflicting information about the site's functionality and the number of individuals actually able to purchase insurance through the Web site.

States trying to enroll individuals in Medicaid and insurance companies trying to sign people up for private insurance have received incomplete and inaccurate applications from the Web site.

H.R. 3362 would require the Secretary of HHS to provide a State-by- State breakdown of the number of unique Web site visits, the number of individuals who create an account, the number of individuals who select a qualified health plan, and the number of individuals who enrolled in a qualified health plan or Medicaid. The report must also describe the problems Americans are encountering with the Web site and how HHS is addressing them.

The American people have a right to firm data and an accurate picture of the exchanges. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton), the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry), the prime sponsor of the legislation.

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, just to clarify, we hear the words ``sign up,'' ``signed up,'' ``equal to enrollment.'' We may know how many people have signed up. We do not know how many have actually enrolled and have paid their first month's premiums. Secondly, we are stewards of the taxpayers--we are not shareholders--and the lack of data is precisely what led the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee to declare this law as a train wreck in that there are no metrics, no data, to determine whether this law is working and on track.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, opponents of the Exchange Information Disclosure Act have argued that requiring weekly reports on the health care law to the American people is too burdensome, too costly for the Department of Health and Human Services. Yet, somehow, HHS managed to find money in its budget for taxpayer-funded grants spent on such things as bike lane signs, dog neutering campaigns, promoting a sport called ``pickleball,'' and lobbying campaigns for soda taxes. Clearly, HHS does not suffer from a lack of resources.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes

to the gentlelady from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the vice chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana, Dr. Cassidy, a very active member of the Health Subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, as Secretary Sebelius acknowledged at an Energy and Commerce hearing in December, enrollment in an exchange plan is not complete until the first month's premium has been paid.

The administration, so far, has refused to tell the American people how many people are actually enrolled by paying their first month's premium in the health care law's exchanges.

Asking the Department to provide the American people regular updates is simply a matter of transparency. Given that HHS officials were so blatantly wrong about the readiness of the health care law's exchanges, they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Regular disclosure is necessary to assess the status of the law, and that is all this bill requires. Let's make the administration, who has continually held back facts regarding implementation of the health care law, meet their pledge to be the most transparent in history.

I urge my colleagues to vote for this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve a point of order against the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my point of order, and I claim the time in opposition to the motion.

Mr. Speaker, opponents of the Exchange Information Disclosure Act argue that HHS is already reporting data. Yet more than 3 months after the disastrous launch of the exchanges, we simply do not know how many Americans have actually completed enrollment by paying their first month's premium. As Secretary Sebelius acknowledged at an Energy and Commerce Committee hearing in December, enrollment in an exchange is not complete until the first month's premium has been paid.

The administration so far has refused to tell the American people how many people are actually enrolled in the health care law's exchanges. Either the administration is refusing to tell us how many people are actually enrolled or they simply do not know. Neither answer should instill confidence in a law that puts over 2 trillion taxpayer dollars on the line.

This underlying bill would require the administration to give us real and actual enrollment data. The American people deserve transparency, and this is what the Exchange Information Disclosure Act would deliver. I urge all Members to oppose this motion to recommit and vote for the underlying bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 3362, the Exchange Information Disclosure Act. There is widespread agreement that the ObamaCare rollout was a failure. Most of us believe the administration's lack of transparency and candor with Congress and the American people caused most of the problems.

Since the beginning of the rollout, I have pressed the administration to release enrollment data to Congress. That data, including who is actually enrolling and what the mix of those who signed up looks like, are the kinds of hard facts we need before us to evaluate how this fundamental restructuring of our health care is really operating.

Yet the administration did not provide that long-promised transparency. Instead, I was forced to subpoena the administration to get any information. While I received some of what I requested, it is not enough for Congress to understand the true impact of this law.

It is clear that, more than halfway through the enrollment, the administration is failing to meet its own goal of 7 million enrollees by March 31.

Last week, the administration released data that showed it has failed to meet an even more important goal--the right mix of young and healthy enrollees. The reality is that you need a good balance of young and healthy individuals in order to offset the more expensive costs of those who are older and less healthy.

Without enough young and healthy enrollees, millions of Americans, including those who have had their plan canceled as a result of the President's broken promise, will see higher costs and fewer choices. With the little data we have, we can see this is actually what is happening.

The American people deserve better than the administration's empty promises. They deserve to know what is really going on. Additionally, the administration has not provided any information on the number of people who have completed enrollment. We don't know how many people have paid their premium.

Taxpayers don't know how many people are receiving tax credits. There is no harm to national security if the administration provides this information to Congress, the media, and the American people; but there may be harm to an individual's health security if their interests aren't protected.

Frankly, I believe this administration cares more about implementing this law than protecting the health care of American families.

The American people have every right to know this information and the future of their health care. Having this data will not change the President's broken promise that ``if you like your plan, you can keep it,'' or his promise that families will see a $2,500 reduction in their premiums.

However, it will undoubtedly affect Americans' health care future. This is not just arbitrary data. This information will determine how much premiums will increase next year, whether access to care will become more limited, how many insurers may no longer offer coverage, and whether or not you can keep seeing your current doctor.

This administration's failed rollout has given the American people little confidence that they can effectively oversee the overhaul of one-sixth of the economy. What possible reason, other than politics, could there be for the administration not releasing this information? This is data that Congress and the American people deserve to know and that the administration should readily and willingly provide.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this bill today, and I call on the Senate to take quick action to move this commonsense legislation forward.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the Chair for that admonition, and I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Young), the distinguished member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the reason this legislation is important is that, from what little information we do have, we know the administration is not meeting their stated goals, and they are not on track to meet 7 million people by March 31. We don't know the mix of people that have enrolled. We don't know how many of them are young and healthy. We don't know how many of them have paid a premium. The reason these things are important for us to know and to track is, this is a big deal. This is one-sixth of the American economy. There is probably no legislative area that affects people more than their health care.

The reason we have to know this information is because if they aren't meeting their stated goals and their projections in terms of the cost of this bill, it could mean that people's premiums skyrocket next year. It could mean that the physician that they are used to seeing and being treated by, many times for an ongoing illness, may not be available to them under their insurance plan.

So these are important issues. These are important benchmarks for us to know. It is important for the American people to know. It is important for the media to know. Because then, if we can understand what is really happening as we are in the middle of this, constructive changes could be made to this bill. What they want to do is keep us in the dark. They say vote ``no.'' Make sure we don't know what is going on, and then we will have a health care crisis even greater than the one we have now.

So I urge a ``yes'' vote on this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you, Mr. Pallone, for yielding time, and especially thank you for your leadership on our committee. It has been nothing less than extraordinary.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to the Exchange Information Disclosure Act. This bill would cost millions of dollars of limited Federal resources but doesn't include any mechanism for paying for it. It is an unnecessary piece of legislation that will have no impact or benefit to the American people. It is just the latest attempt by the Republican majority to incite fear and distrust of the Federal health insurance marketplace and discredit President Obama and the Affordable Care Act.

Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent wrote that the Exchange Information Disclosure Act is ``a political attack coming from a party that wants to see the law fail.'' The House has voted 47 times, Mr. Speaker, on bills that would repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act, but not one of them has become law.

My friend Mr. Terry's bill that we are considering today marks the 48th attempt, and it is another nail in the coffin of haphazard Republican efforts to disenfranchise the American people by chipping away at the Affordable Care Act, with the ultimate goal of taking away Americans' access to affordable health care.

Make no mistake, this bill is not about transparency and open government. Its true purpose is to pile on more and more unnecessary, cumbersome, and unprecedented requirements so that HHS will be forced to focus time and attention away from managing the Federal health insurance marketplace and redirect it to completing worthless weekly reports.

I am particularly disappointed in the committee process--or more accurately, the lack of committee process--with regard to this bill. I sit on Energy and Commerce's Health Subcommittee, and at no point did the chairman of the subcommittee nor the full committee hold a legislative hearing or markup on this bill. I don't recall one. Surely, adding mountains of onerous reporting requirements that will cost the government millions in order to comply would have warranted an opportunity for members to weigh in before it was brought to the floor. Apparently, the

chairman of the committee felt differently.

This bill is now the 48th example of House Republicans pandering to their base by ramming through partisan policies that attack the President. The bill would require HHS to supply Congress weekly reports detailing the number of unique Web site visitors to healthcare.gov, the number of chat logins, the number of enrollees by ZIP Code, their level of coverage, and other data sets. What exactly my friends hope to accomplish with this weekly data dump still escapes me.

Perhaps House Republicans weren't aware of the extensive disclosure of data on health insurance enrollments that is already being provided on a monthly basis. The administration releases enrollment data monthly, Mr. Speaker, just like they do with Medicare, CHIP, and other Federal programs.

The monthly HHS enrollment reports are excellent, detailed reports. Weekly reports will shed no more light on enrollment in the health exchange than would monthly reports.

The bill also demands that HHS make publicly available a list of navigator grantees. Were my colleagues unaware that the Department released the entire list of navigator grantees back in October? I have those here for your inspection.

I will say it again: this bill is completely unnecessary, and it is Republican fear mongering. The fact is, Mr. Speaker, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land. I ask my colleagues to embrace it. It is benefiting millions of Americans in my district and in your district as well.

Thank you for the time, Mr. Pallone.

Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, supporters of this legislation claim that it is simply an effort to get more information about how the Affordable Care Act is being implemented, but it is not really that. It is an effort to slow down the implementation of the new law by drowning the Department of Health and Human Services in red tape.

They want enrollment information, but this week, they got enrollment information from the administration. That enrollment information showed that 2.2 million Americans have signed up for private coverage. They want demographic information. HHS has given them demographic information. HHS is going to release all of the information that they are asking for every month, but the Republicans say, ``Oh, that is not good enough. We want it every week.'' They want more than what otherwise might be available to them because they want to know some things that I can't understand why they would want to know them.

They want to know the ZIP Codes of everybody who has signed up. They want to know what the details are of a chat between somebody who is asking a question on the Web site and what answers he got. I can't understand why that is important. They want to know what transpired in the call centers. In other words, they want to know what somebody said in a call center. Is it their business to know what questions are asked in a call center? They want a list of the people who are the adjusters and the brokers. There are thousands of them around the country, so there is no purpose to knowing that. They are not accredited by the government. If they are by the States, it is up to each State. They could ask each State that information.

Let me put this in perspective.

If anybody had a bill asking the private sector to come up with reports every single week on information that they could wait a couple of more weeks to get, it would be looked at as just straight harassment, government red tape, bureaucracy that is intruding into the business for no purpose. That is what this bill is all about. They want to intrude in a government agency. I guess, if they have a bureaucratic intrusion and the harassment of a government agency, it is okay, but if it were to happen to a private sector business, it would be inappropriate. If we asked polluters this information, you could get the information. If you asked them to give you the information every week, why do you need it every week?

I ask the Republicans: Why do they need this every week if they are going to get it every month?

It is obvious. This law is working, and they don't want to come again to the floor and ask for its repeal because people have insurance. Millions of people now have insurance. If they want to repeal the law, they are going to take that insurance away from them.

They want to continue to say: What are they hiding? What are they hiding that they are not giving you on a weekly schedule but that they are giving you on a monthly schedule?

Absolutely nothing that is significant. The enrollment reports we already have indicate that over 6 million people have signed up for coverage since October 1. The Web site can handle 80,000 simultaneous users, and it has been stable even though there was a surge of enrollment in late December.

The law is working. Republicans don't want to hear these facts. They don't want to know about it, but they think they should get everybody at HHS--maybe even have them hire more people--to report to them every week so they can still not recognize that there is good news in what is actually happening.

This is a goofy bill--it is absolutely unnecessary--and I urge my colleagues to vote against it.