Lawmakers Want More Information on Delay of Healthcare Coverage Mandate

Pursuant to Rules X and XI of the United States House of Representatives, the Committee on Energy and Commerce is continuing its investigation of the decisions to delay requirements under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) related to health care coverage mandates applicable to employers with more than 50 employees and the verification processes to guarantee the proper use of taxpayer dollars.

We wrote to you on July 3, 2013, with questions about the decision to delay key PPACA requirements. Since then, we have received your July 9, 2013 response and held a hearing featuring as our sole witness Mark Iwry, senior advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Retirement and Health Policy at the Department of the Treasury (Treasury). While we appreciate your quick response to our letter and your providing a witness for the hearing, both the testimony of Mr. Iwry and your July 9 letter failed to address several of the Committee's questions about Treasury's decision to delay the employer mandate. For example, representatives from both Treasury and the White House have stated publicly that the decision to delay the employer mandate was made after engaging in a dialogue with businesses. Our July 3 letter requested information on these meetings and discussions, and Treasury has yet to provide this information. Further, at our July 18 hearing, Mr. Iwry was not able to provide specific answers to our questions about the decision to delay the employer mandate, including the record before Treasury that convinced the department that a one-year delay was appropriate, which departments reviewed the decision, Treasury's statutory or constitutional authority to act, and whether Treasury also considered a delay of the individual mandate. Finally, we have yet to receive an answer to the questions for the record we submitted to Mr. Iwry on August 2, 2013.

In order to better understand the decision of the Department of the Treasury to delay the PPACA's requirements for employers, and in order to obtain the information requested by Members of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations during the July 18 hearing, we ask that you provide the following information and documents no later than September 6, 2013: