New security issues surface as Health and Human Services chief testifies
Wednesday, October 30, 2013 Last updated: Wednesday October 30, 2013, 5:05 PM
BY LAURIE KELLMAN AND RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s embattled top health official declared herself accountable Wednesday for failures of the much-maligned health insurance website as a newly surfaced government memo pointed to security concerns that were laid out just days before its launch.
Despite the problems, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius defended the health care overhaul, the signature legislative accomplishment of Obama’s first term. She said the website problems will be fixed by Nov. 30 and gaining health insurance will make a positive difference in the lives of millions of Americans.
The website HealthCare.gov was still experiencing outages, even as Sebelius was testifying to the House Energy and Commerce Committee that “I’m responsible.” And she faced a new range of questions about an internal memo from her department that revealed the troubled website was granted a temporary security certificate on Sept. 27, just four days before it went live on Oct. 1.
The memo, obtained by The Associated Press, said incomplete testing created uncertainties that posed a potentially high security risk for the website. It called for a six-month “mitigation” program, including ongoing monitoring and testing.
Republicans opposed to Obama’s health care law are calling for Sebelius to resign. She apologized to people having trouble signing up but told the committee that the technical issues that led to frozen screens and error messages are being cleared up on a daily basis.
Security issues raise major new concerns on top of the long list of technical problems the administration is grappling with.
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