[An Nahar] President Barack Obama My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it... 's health secretary publicly apologized Wednesday for the rocky rollout of the U.S. health care law's new website, stressing that citizens "deserve better" from the system.
But while Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius regretted that navigating HealthCare.gov has been a "miserably frustrating experience" for many, she insisted that so-called "Obamacare" has been working well for millions of Americans.
The pointwoman for the new health care law sounded chastened about the trouble-plagued online portal through which millions are expected to register for health insurance.
"Let me say directly to these Americans: You deserve better. I apologize. I'm accountable to you for fixing these problems," Sebelius, the seniormost administration official to testify before Congress on the health care law, told a closely-watched House panel.
And when Republican congresswoman Marsha Blackburn grilled her and suggested the secretary was seeking to pawn off responsibility on contractors like Verizon, where a breakdown took the site offline last weekend, Sebelius interrupted to say she herself would take the heat.
"Hold me accountable for the debacle. I'm responsible," she said.
HealthCare.gov, which allows access to exchange marketplaces where Americans can purchase private insurance, debuted on October 1.
Committee chairman Fred Upton said he has seen little improvement in the website's performance since then, noting that his staff was "hit with an error message" even as they tried to go on the page early Wednesday.
"Sadly here we are now five weeks into enrollment and the news seems to get worse by the day," Upton said.
"After more than three years to prepare, malfunctions have become the norm."
Sebelius's appearance marked the third congressional hearing in a week addressing the faulty start to Obamacare.
Critics like Blackburn have focused on how the health care law is booting millions of people off their plans, but Sebelius countered that insurance companies routinely alter coverage in the individual market, and that people on these plans often hold them for less than a year.
And skeleton policies that do not measure up to Obamacare's rules, including not providing free mammograms or charging women 50 percent more than men, will need to be changed to conform to the law.
"If someone is buying a brand new policy... they will have consumer protections for the first time," Sebelius said.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/31/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Needs a whole lot more than a cheap apology.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
10/31/2013 0:36 Comments ||
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#2
So as a good party apparatchik (and sorry I don't know if Obama is Mao or Stalin or Castro oriented) shouldn't she be sent to a Siberian Gulag or a remote rice paddy?
#4
I do hope 'The Hammer' is right and this entire Obamacare klusterphuech takes these communist dems down the trail to long-term political destruction.
#11
Personally loving the roll out - a perfect metaphor for the entire law. If I were in charge of Obamacare and trying to destroy it from inside I could not have done a better job.
#13
If she's accountable why is she blaming everyone else?
SOP for Sebelius. During her last year at second term, she left the Kansas budgetary procedure next to the iron and went campaigning Barry Os'. She blew it off so badly that an entire week after the morning news was sounding the alarm that funding for...wait for it...teachers, police, and firefighters was literally down to the lint. She finally hopped a flight back to Topeka and attempted to raid a separate fund without Congressional approval then blamed Republicans for the illegal attempt at account raiding. They never said which account she planned to plunder, but the fallout was so rank not even the die hard Democrats had anything to do with her. After she was, uhem, promoted, the interim governor busted chops to put out the fires and to his credit did, but did not have a chance after the brand damage and against Sam Brownback.
#14
This was all on the heels of the Greensburg tornado, where she spent a few days rehearsing the progressive tale then came out and blamed BOOOOOSHH!!11 for the casualties on account of some Kansas Guards being in Iraq.
#15
They wouldn't fire her when she's only starting to get the name recognition required to deflect blame from the President. She will take heat for some time and then will resign stating partisan attacks or whatever the new strategy says. Anything but incompetance because otherwise she would never have been appointed.
#16
Great story about some people I know who traveled from Oklahoma to help dig their buddy's house out of his basement, turned around and there was the President of the United States watching, cracking jokes, especially when GW learned they were from Oklahoma :)
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