House GOP seeks more documents in probe of health law’s subsidies

House Republicans demanded more documents Monday in an investigation they hope will derail a key feature of President Obama’s healthcare law.

Reps. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said the IRS redacted documents about how it decided to handle the law’s insurance subsidies. The lawmakers are now asking for an unfiltered look at the decision-making process.

{mosads}The healthcare law provides subsidies for most people who buy insurance through a new insurance exchange. The law envisioned each state operating its own exchange, but authorized a federally-run fallback in states that don’t act.

The statute refers to subsidies flowing through a “state exchange” — which, to the law’s critics, means subsidies shouldn’t be available in the federal exchange. The IRS has said it determined that Congress intended for subsidies to be available in both state- and federally-run marketplaces, but Republicans have pressed the tax agency to back up that assertion.

Camp and Issa — respectively, the chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee and Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said their staffers were allowed to view certain documents about the IRS’s decision-making, but only with heavy redaction.

One internal IRS document said “these provisions … may be controversial,” followed by heavy redactions, Camp and Issa charged in a letter Monday.

They said another edited document was titled “Significant Issues and Considerations.”

The lawmakers requested a full look at the redacted materials.