Republican Rep. Andy Harris said the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services contacted him late last week to say it will honor his request and investigate Maryland's rollout of its version of the Affordable Care Act.

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Maryland's version of the Affordable Care Act is now the target of a federal investigation and the focus is millions of federal dollars the state spent on the botched rollout.Republican Rep. Andy Harris said the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services contacted him late last week to say it will honor his request and investigate Maryland's rollout of its version of the Affordable Care Act.Mobile users tap here for video.It will investigate how the state spent millions of federal dollars to get the glitch-filled sign-up website up and running. The state also spent money trying to repair it following fallouts with exchange leadership and contractors.Harris said he's not sure what the investigation will uncover."I don't know, but someone has to answer how $200 million federal dollars, taxpayer dollars, could have been spent by Maryland and not come out with a product that works," Harris said.Harris expects the IG to examine how contracts were bid out and oversight of the exchange. He believes if there is fraud or abuse it's possible Maryland would have to pay the feds back.Harris, who is a fierce opponent of the ACA, requested the investigation last month after state legislators delayed their own probe."The General Assembly started to investigate, bipartisan, joint investigation and then abruptly stopped it, then announced it was going to be a year and a half until we got results, you know, that smelled of one-party politics in Maryland," Harris said.A federal inspector general investigation has subpoena power and is considered one of the highest-level and exhaustive types of government investigations.At a pre-K expansion event in Baltimore on Monday, Gov. Martin O'Malley said the problem boils down to one big mistake."Somebody asked me, what have you learned from this experience and I've learned we should have hired Deloitte instead of IBM. I mean, our contractors really let us down. Software they said was ready to go wasn't ready to go," O'Malley said.Harris said he's not sure how long the inspector general investigation will take.