House passes bill requiring health care numbers

The House has approved a bill that would require the Obama administration to report weekly on how many Americans have signed up for health care coverage.

The vote was 259-154 on Thursday. Some three dozen Democrats joined the GOP majority in backing the measure, one in a series of Republican-driven bills casting a political spotlight on the law in an election year.

The bill would require the administration to report weekly on the number of visits to the government health care website, the number of Americans who applied and the number of enrollees by ZIP code, as well as other statistics.

The administration has reported monthly on enrollment, announcing last week that 2.2 million enrolled through the end of December and nearly 4 million had been deemed eligible for Medicaid.