A Republican House member introduced a resolution this week seeking documents, records and communications from HHS related to any analysis conducted by the CMS chief actuary pertaining to the health reform bill, and specifically a report issued weeks after the March 23 passage of the bill in an effort to determine whether the Obama administration withheld releasing data on the bill days before a final vote.

The analysis, issued April 22 by CMS Chief Actuary Rich Foster, estimated that the bill would increase federal spending by $311 billion over 10 years, at odds with the official Congressional Budget Office score of the bill that showed savings as a result of the legislation worth approximately $130 billion over the same time frame.

The resolution follows a similar request from Republican lawmakers last month. “We are concerned that the information in this report, and other CMS Chief Actuary reports, was not released publicly before final passage of the legislation, thereby preventing Congress and the public from appreciating the information your agency had compiled on its cost prior to a vote on final passage,” House Energy and Commerce ranking Republican Joe Barton (TX) and health subcommittee member Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) wrote to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on June 14. The lawmakers had requested that Sebelius respond in writing to their request within 14 days.

That didn’t happen, so Burgess introduced a three-page resolution late Tuesday that seeks a variety of information from HHS in a formal “resolution of inquiry.”

Days before the reform bill passed, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), along with Barton and other prominent Republicans, sent a letter to Foster asking for his take on the legislation moving in the House. The letter, sent March 19, was responded to the next day by Foster, who said, “I regret that my staff and I will not be able to prepare our analysis within this very tight time frame, due to the complexity of the legislation.”

The effort to get CMS data and analysis about a controversial bill closely resembles what happened during the run up to passage of the Medicare Modernization Act.
Former CMS Administrator Tom Scully instructed Foster not to turn over estimates of the MMA to the Ways and Means Committee that were higher than the official Congressional Budget Office score of the bill. The HHS Office of Inspector General found that Scully had not violated criminal or civil law by prohibiting CMS’ chief actuary from handing over the requested data, siding with a Department of Justice (DOJ) opinion that the administrator had the final say-so over disseminating the information. The Government Accountability Office, however, found that Scully should repay part of his $145,000 salary because federal law prohibits money being used to pay the salary of an employee who obstructs communication with Congress (Inside CMS, Sept. 9, 2004).