Members of the majority in Rep. Joe Barton's oversight committee.
The utter ignorance of Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) when it comes to health care law was on full display in Thursday morning's House hearings on the implementation of Obamacare. Barton
charged the programmers and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid with breaking privacy law under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
That was too much for Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ). Watch:
Pallone: I started out in my opening statement saying there was no legitimacy to this hearing and the last line of the questioning certainly confirms is that.
HIPAA only applies when there's health information being provided. That's not in play here today. No health information is required in the application process. And why is that? Because pre-existing conditions don't matter! So once again, here we have my Republican colleagues trying to scare everybody —
Barton, interrupting: If the gentleman will yield?
Pallone: No, I will not yield to this monkey court or whatever —
Barton: This is not a monkey court!
It's a monkey court when the lawmakers conducting the hearing have no clue what the laws that they make actually do. But you can't expect a helluva lot more from Republicans.
