Republicans investigating last fall's Obamacare launch questioned a top administrator's instruction to delete an email from a White House advisor discussing the problems with Healthcare.gov signups and raising concerns of a cover up with regard to the website.

Like Us on Facebook

The GOP investigation committee revealed on Friday an email dated Oct. 5, 2013 from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator Marilyn Tavenner asking CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille to delete the email but to see if the latter could "work on a call script."

At the time, CMS was having registration problems with the website.

Fred Upton, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Tim Murphy, head of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, asked Tavenner to make herself available as soon as possible to explain her request to delete the email and whether that was the case with similar documents. They also asked the CMS official to justify the redactions in the email.

The controversial email was included in documents submitted by the Department of Health and Human Services - which covers the CMS - to the investigation committee after it was served with a subpoena last October.

The committee received the documents last week, a day after CMS claimed it was unable to recover some of Tavenner's emails.

"Right on cue, when the going gets tough, the Obama administration proclaims it can't find the documents," Upton said as he questioned what it was the "self-proclaimed 'most transparent administration'" was trying to cover.

HHS noted that Tavenner receives about 12,000 emails each month, explaining that the administrator would likely delete the emails after forwarding them to her staff.

Meanwhile, CMS claimed it could retrieve majority of Tavenner's past emails, adding that it has identified over 70,000 internal department exchanges containing the search terms the committee had indicated.

While health agencies attributed the US$1 billion website's failure to volume, Upton said evidence seemed to suggest otherwise.

The committee will continue to probe deeper into the case and hold accountable those found responsible for the failures, Upton added.

Some 135,000 documents and more than 100 hours worth of transcribed interviews from the HHS and CMS have already been turned over to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in response to the October subpoena, CNBC reported.

TagsObamacare, HealthCare.gov, CMS, HHS, Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Fred Upton, Tim Murphy, Marilyn Tavenner