House Intel Chairman: Obamacare Website National Security Risk

The error-filled Obamacare website healthcare.gov is not secure, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers says, and he's worried that there is not a plan to prevent the loss of private information.

"The way the system is designed, it's not secure," the Michigan Republican told CNN "State of the Union" host Candy Crowley Sunday. "I'm even more concerned today than I was even last week."

Rogers said there are different segments of people who control pieces of information from the site, and that's a problem.

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"They say we don't store information, but they have to store your application at some point," Rogers said. "And that's a lot of your very personal information."

Rogers said that during Thursday's House hearing concerning the website, "it was very clear to me that they do not have an overarching solid cyber security plan to prevent the loss of private information."

Another private entity has been called in to help with the site's security, but "the problem is they may have to redesign the entire system," he said.

Following Rogers' comments, Louisiana Republican Rep. John Fleming, appearing in a discussion with Crowley and Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who was a health policy adviser for the Obama administration from 2009-2011, said that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius should take responsibility for the website's problems.

"She says the people that want her to resign, she doesn't work for," said Fleming. "I can tell you, I'm a taxpayer. She works for me. She's a public servant. I'm a public servant. I work for the American people."

Fleming said that Republicans have been trying to protect Americans from the damaging effects of Obamacare, and that lawmakers "tried to tell her [Sebelius] all along that she was a big cheerleader for this," but she didn't want to hear from Republicans.

Emanuel, who worked on the Obamacare law, said there were a number of hearings in the House and Senate, and that Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus worked with Republicans "for nine months from January all the way through the end of August trying to get a bipartisan bill," but that was rejected.

Emanuel claimed, "We tried to find out the Republican plan that would increase access to all Americans, hold down healthcare costs and improve the quality of the system through a uniform standard. There never was a Republican plan. The idea that they wanted to work with us is just false."

Fleming, who is a primary care physician, said the law is already hurting Americans because "half of the primary care doctors are not accepting new patients. Medicare reimbursements keep going down. The workload in terms of paperwork and all keeps going up."

Fleming said there are an "unprecedented number of primary care doctors that are opting out of Medicare. And so you're going to walk into the doctor's office one day with a card that says I'm entitled to health care and the doctor is not going to be able to accept it."

Emanuel disagreed with Fleming, saying that experts say there is no doctor shortage going on, and that Obamacare is already improving the quality of the system.

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