Obamacare Liar Kathleen Sebelius Blames Verizon For Obamacare Website Problems
Besides throwing Verizon under the bus, Kathleen Sebelius lied over and over again about Obamacare and it’s website.
I wonder what Verizon thinks about the Obama administration blaming them for the Obama administration’s complete and utter failures.
Following last weeks testimony by CGI and Tuesday’s testimony by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius met with the House of Representatives Wednesday morning to discuss implementation and website problems with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The Energy and Commerce hearing became very heated as she sparred with Representative Blackburn on who exactly was to blame for the launch failures. Within the first hour, finger pointing shifted from Verizon to Michelle Snyder at CMS to the Secretary herself.
In her written testimony, Secretary Sebelius said to the American people, “you deserve better, I apologize.” This marks only the second apology to the American people from the Administration concerning the failures of the HealthCare.gov website. She followed this by owning that proper testing had not been completed on the site before its launch.
Following an audible gasp in the room as Sebelius said that Michelle Snyder, the COO at CMS was in charge of the failures, the Secretary changed her tone quickly telling Congress to, “hold me responsible for the debacle” of the website. This came after she repeatedly said that Verizon, who “hosts the cloud,” was at fault for the outage of the website.
When pushed for financial disclosure of the HealthCare.gov efforts, the Secretary asserted that to date the Administration has spent “$118M on the website itself” and “$56M on other IT to support the web”. She followed this by owning that despite the large sums of money spent, proper testing had not been completed on the site before its launch.
Energy and Commerce Chairman Upton revisited previous testimony from CGI that, “CGI had the data, but needed the Administration’s permission to release it.” This led to a series of questions from Representative DeGette and others about who was responsible for each piece of the rollout and who was accountable for which portion by which date. Despite the round and round, Sebelius said that she “absolutely” guaranteed that the issues would be fully operational by the end of November.
Sebelius repeatedly mentioned the “health security” that she and the Administration believe will be extended to millions of uninsured Americans for the first time. She used her answers to note that millions of those who previously had inconsistent or nonexistent insurance would soon be able to feel secure in the consistency of their health coverage. She was able to sell her impassioned and community outreach approach to make the argument that despite the issues and troubles, the ultimate goal would still be achieved.
Representative Waxman supported her assertions claiming that, “like Medicare Part D, the website issues will soon be forgotten.” While this part of his testimony might prove to be true, his support of the Secretary and the ACA was questionable. He used most of his four minutes to read statistics like those from Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that the ACA will save “$10B over 10 years.” This number however, is outdated and was the far extreme of the possibility of savings.
Kathleen Sebelius has been Secretary of HHS since April 2009, following her two-term stint as Governor of Kansas. Before that she was also an Insurance Commissioner and well versed in health care access and quality. While she may not be well versed in the coding issues and IT infrastructure of the website, it is clear that as she remains Secretary of HHS she will have the support of the Democratic party, the President and can rely on her background to propel the Administration’s message on the ACA.
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