Sebelius on the Run

The HHS Secretary refuses to testify about ObamaCare's rollout.

Oct. 18, 2013 7:04 p.m. ET

The Affordable Care Act's botched rollout has stunned its media cheering section, and it even seems to have surprised the law's architects. The problems run much deeper than even critics expected, and whatever federal officials, White House aides and outside contractors are doing to fix them isn't working. But who knows? Omerta is the word of the day as the Obama Administration withholds information from the public.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is even refusing to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a hearing this coming Thursday. HHS claims she has scheduling conflicts, but we hope she isn't in the White House catacomb under interrogation by Valerie Jarrett about her department's incompetence.

The department is also refusing to make available lower-level officials who might detail the source or sources of this debacle. Ducking an investigation with spin is one thing. Responding with a wall of silence to the invitation of a duly elected congressional body probing the use of more than half a billion taxpayer dollars is another. This Obama crowd is something else.

What bunker is Henry Chao hiding in, for instance? He's the HHS official in charge of technology for the Affordable Care Act, and in March he said at an insurance lobby conference that his team had given up trying to create "a world-class user experience." With the clock running, Mr. Chao added that his main goal was merely to "just make sure it's not a third-world experience."

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HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Capitol Hill in Washington in April. Associated Press

He didn't succeed. Whatever is below third-world standards would flatter the 36 federally run exchanges as they've started up. But perhaps Mr. Chao or someone else, if not Mrs. Sebelius, can answer even the simple question of how many Americans have managed to enroll for coverage. HHS could easily resolve any confusion but it won't even talk to Democratic allies, friendly reporters and what it calls the insurance industry "stakeholders" that it will need to make ObamaCare work.

No doubt a hearing would be a spectacle—with TV cameras on hand—but Mrs. Sebelius can't hide forever. Even pro-entitlement liberals want to know about what went wrong and why, how much if any progress is being made, and whether the ObamaCare website Healthcare.gov will be usable in a matter of months—or years.

More disclosure might also help HHS preserve a scrap of credibility, given that none of its initial explanations has held up. Right now, no one trusts a word that emerges from Fortress ObamaCare.

To take one example, this week the Associated Press obtained an internal HHS memo from September 5, 2013 specifying the Administration's monthly enrollment targets—a half-million sign-ups in October, 3.3 million by December 31, and so on. Asked about this by AP, HHS not only declined to say if it is meeting its projections. The department issued a statement claiming that "The Administration has not set monthly enrollment targets." The spokesman did not cite the classic Marx Brothers line, "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"

Eventually Mrs. Sebelius will have to make a real accounting of this government failure to someone other than the TV comic Jon Stewart, and perhaps she can also explain why the people who can't build a working website also deserve the power to reorganize one-sixth of the U.S. economy. For now, the Administration that styles itself as the most transparent in history won't reveal the truth—perhaps because it is afraid of what the public will find.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303680404579143...

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by 14300 on October 21, 2013 at 3:36pm

They're going to wish Obamacare had been "defunded" instead of dissected and publicly humiliated as the worthless pile of crap that it is. Global embarrassment for obastard's crowning achievement. Looks good on him.

Permalink Reply by Central Scrutinizer on October 21, 2013 at 3:49pm

this evil incarnation should have never been created in the first place ;)

Permalink Reply by Central Scrutinizer on October 21, 2013 at 9:25pm

PROGNOSIS: SEBELIUS TO BE GRILLED ON HILL

Permalink Reply by Central Scrutinizer on October 23, 2013 at 12:38am

Sebelius: Obama Did Not Know About Obamacare Website Glitches

CORPORATE CONTROLLED NON NEWS NETWORK VIDEO

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN: Did you try signing on the site yourself?

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS, HHS SECRETARY: I have created an account on the site. I have not tried signing up because I have insurance.

GUPTA: Did you find it challenging? What did you think of it?

SEBELIUS: Well, I think there certainly are some challenges. It could be smoother. It could be easier to access. And that's really what we're working on.

GUPTA: Did you let people --

SEBELIUS: Nobody says the site is working the way we want it to. Certainly, the president acknowledged yesterday no one could be more frustrated than I am and this isn't smooth. People are signing up every day. People have available coverage and no one, I think it's important to say, Sanjay, is losing coverage now. The earliest the plans start is January 1st. If you sign up by the 15th of December, you will have coverage on day one. So, people are frustrated with a website, but the product is there. The prices are good. It will not sellout and the prices won't change.

GUPTA: The president did say that he was angry about this. I mean, do you know when he first knew that there was a problem?

SEBELIUS: Well, I think it became clear fairly early on, the first couple of days

GUPTA: So not before that though?

SEBELIUS: No.

GUPTA: Not before October 1st? There was no concern at the White House or HHS?

SEBELIUS: I think that we talked about having testing going forward, and if we had an ideal situation and could have built a product and, you know, a five-year period of time, we probably would have taken five years but we didn't have five years. And certainly, Americans who rely on health coverage didn't have five years for us to wait. We wanted to make sure we made good on this final implementation of the law. And again, people can sign up. The call center is open for business. We've had 1,100,000 calls. We've had 19 million people visit the website. Five-hundred thousand accounts created and people shopping every day. So, people are signing up and there's help in neighborhoods around the country that people can have a one-on-one visit with a trained navigator and figure out how to sign up. So people are able to sign up.