Former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Tuesday that her “most terrifying” days of Obamacare’s rollout were those leading up to Dec. 1, when the Obama administration had pledged to have HealthCare.gov fixed.
“I think probably the most terrifying couple of days were Nov. 29 and 30,” Sebelius told the crowd at a panel discussion in Washington, D.C., hosted by the pro-Obamacare group Enroll America. “I remember thinking, ‘I really hope this is going to work.'”
After the website’s disastrous launch in October, which resulted in fewer than 30,000 people signing up in the first month, HHS set a Dec. 1 deadline for fixing it. And while the administration always expressed public confidence that the goal would be met, Sebelius’ comments indicate there still was some internal doubt in the days before the re-launch.
The site’s performance did improve after Dec. 1, and sign-ups accelerated in the following months, eventually hitting 8 million in April. But the failed October debut remains Sebelius’ biggest regret about the rollout, she said Tuesday.
“Better would have been a website that was fully functional,” she said.
“I think probably the most terrifying couple of days were Nov. 29 and 30 when I realized my Presidential ambitions were toast.”
She was a terrible appointment.
That group of management experts and techies who fixed the site are heroes.
Obama owes them a shit ton.
I didn’t recall that there was anything magical about Dec. 1, just that the site steadily improved and was generally usable by then.
If the worst someone can say about the ACA is that the initial roll-out was terrible, then I’d say the ACA is looking pretty damned good.
Why? As we’ve seen with a few other states’ problems, setting up the exchange was no easy feat.
Also, Secretary Sebelius, who formerly served as Insurance Commissioner and then Governor for the State of Kansas, helped get several Republican-led states off the fence and agree to expand Medicaid through the “private option.”