Today, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on the disastrous implementation of Obamacare. Here are five direct quotes from the Secretary that have left us puzzled to say the least.
#5: “Contractors had never suggested a delay.”
Secretary Sebelius seems to suggest that the Administration was blindsided by the numerous problems of HealthCare.gov. A story in the Washington Post suggests otherwise. According to the article, a group of about 10 insurers were convened to test out the website before its release and “about a month before the exchange opened, this testing group urged agency officials not to launch it nationwide because it was still riddled with problems, according to an insurance IT executive who was close to the rollout.” It appears that the Administration was at least partially aware of the serious technical issues associated with the website.
#4: “The assessment we have made is that it will take the end of November for an optimally performing website.”
No one can predict the future, but given its track record and the analysis of various IT experts, the Secretary’s claim is hard to believe. An article in the New York Times noted, “Some specialists working on the project said the online system required such extensive repairs that it might not operate smoothly until after the Dec. 15 deadline for people to sign up for coverage starting in January, although that view is not universally shared.” The article also states that, “One specialist said that as many as five million lines of software code may need to be rewritten before the Web site runs properly.”
A blog post by Clay Johnson, President Obama’s former innovation advisor, suggests the issues with the website run much deeper: “Healthcare.gov got this way not because of incompetence or sloppiness of an individual vendor, but because of a deeply engrained and malignant cancer that’s eating away at the federal government’s ability to provide effective online services. It’s a cancer that’s shut out the best and brightest minds from working on these problems, diminished competition for federal work, and landed us here — where you have half-billion dollar websites that don’t work.”
#3: “The website has never crashed. It is functional but at a very slow speed and very low reliability.”
Perhaps she is using a nonconventional or extremely technical definition of “crashed,” but there have been numerous reports of the website crashing or being completely unavailable to users since its October 1st launch. In fact, on its very first day, the website crashed according to an article by Josh Archambault at Forbes.com. Embarrassingly enough for Secretary Sebelius, HealthCare.gov appeared to be down during the hearing, as illustrated by a CNN split-screen.
#2: “I am not eligible for the exchange, because I have coverage in an employer plan.”
This was perhaps the most bizarre statement by Secretary Sebelius during the hearing. According to Healthcare.gov, this appears to be completely false. A page on the website titled, “What if I have job-based insurance?” specifically states, “If you'd like to explore Marketplace coverage options you can.” As long as an individual lives in the United States, is a citizen or legal resident, and is not presently incarcerated, he or she is permitted to utilize the Obamacare exchanges. As far as I know, Secretary Sebelius meets all of those requirements.
#1: “Yes, he is.”
Some context is needed here. This was a response to Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, who during the hearing asked, “the president kept saying if you like your health care plan, you can keep it, so is he keeping his promise?” So Secretary Sebelius is standing by the President’s frequently cited claim that people could keep their health insurance. She does so despite numerous stories and reports of millions of Americans losing their insurance as a result of the law – not to mention the recent analysis of Washington Post’s “Fact Checker,” who judged Obama’s claim false and issued it a whopping “Four Pinocchios.”