The Most Transparent Administration Puts a Gag Order on HealthCare.gov Testing

With the second Obamacare open-enrollment beginning on November 15th, the enrollment system's testing begins with insurance companies this week.

Of course, last year the enrollment system testing was a real mess resulting in a humiliating Obamacare launch for the administration.

Up until now I wasn't expecting any major problems with HealthCare.gov's consumer enrollment system given all of the lessons learned and the new people running things.

But apparently, the administration is pretty worried about what could happen.

According to this morning's Wall Street Journal the administration has emailed insurers that it will require "all testers to acknowledge the confidentiality of this process to access the testing environment." The administration reminded insurers that their confidentiality agreement with the Obama administration means that insurance executives "will not use, disclose, prescribe, post to a public forum, or in any way share Test Data with any person or entity, included but not limited to media..." This includes any "results of this testing exercise and any information describing or otherwise relating to the performance or functionality" of the Obamacare enrollment and eligibility system.

My first reaction was, What's their problem? We're going to know just how well the second version of HealthCare.gov works in just six weeks anyway.

Then it occurred to me there is this election in just four weeks.

They don't appear to have a lot of confidence in HealthCare.gov version 2.0!

Should the rest of us be worried?