Five Democrats in the House have asked the U.S. Attorney General to see if Uncle Sam can claw back money paid to contractors for the development of healthcare.gov, as the feds struggled for a second day to get the insurance sign up process functioning on that web site.
"We write today to express our deep concerns over contracts our government engaged in to create the website known as HealthCare.gov," the letter says.
"Specifically, we ask that you pursue any and all remedies up to and including a refund of any and all monies paid to the contractors for a website that doesn't work."
The five Democrats who put their name to the note are not household names nationally, but some have been targets of D.C. Republicans looking to win a few more seats in the Congress. They include:
Rep. Pete Gallego and Rep. Filemon Vela of Texas, Rep. Kyrsten Sinema and Rep. Ron Barber of Arizona and Rep. William Enyart of Illinois.
"It is no secret that the website has not performed in a satisfactory manner," their letter to the Attorney General stated. You can read the letter at http://gallego.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/gallego-fix-healthcaregov-and-give-taxpayers-a-refund
The web site itself still works - but after you get a few clicks into the site, often it was not possible to create an account or do anything on the insurance enrollment process.
"The system is down at the moment," a familiar error message stated.
"We are experiencing technical difficulties and hope to have them resolved soon. Please try again later."
The Department of Health and Human Services says while a data center that supports the web site's data hub, there was still problems for those trying to create a new account.
"Users with an existing account login are now able to continue through the application and enrollment process," said a statement from HHS.
"Users without an account may experience a wait time online while we continue to test this particular part of the system. We believe we will be able to resolve it by the end of the day to prevent any online wait times."
