That's the fear spurring a group of researchers, who say the White House has encouraged them to make copies of official data related to the Affordable Care Act because of worries that the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump will erase it, a new report says.

Politico reported that several dozen independent researchers on their own had begun copying Obamacare data and documents in a race to beat the Jan. 20 inauguration of Trump, an avid critic of President Barack Obama's signature health-care reform law.

But they "then got a boost from Jeanne Lambrew, the White House's top health reform official, who also sounded alarms the new administration might expunge reams of information from public websites and end access to data," Politco reported, citing researchers.



That hypothetical erasure would echo the "memory hole" in Orwell's classic dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four." The book's protagonist Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Information, where he labors away at cutting out parts of archived newspaper stories that conflict with governing regime's latest propaganda line, and disposes of them into a hole leading to a furnace, where they are burnt.

The data being copied by the researchers includes information about Obamacare enrollment and premiums, according to Politco.

A White House spokesman on Thursday told CNBC, "We're not commenting on the Politico report."

Earlier this month, it was revealed that climate researchers were also copying official government data about climate change because of concerns about Trump, who has said the idea that humans are affecting the climate is a "hoax" and promised to cancel the Paris accord on climate change.