During a Tuesday interview with the Associated Press, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius went off the White House talking points and admitted that launching the federal ObamaCare exchange on October 1 was “a bad call.” Sebelius was responding to questions about the decision to launch despite warnings that the site was not ready or properly tested for security:
When asked why officials pushed ahead with the Oct. 1 launch date despite warnings the site hadn’t been properly tested, Sebelius said they were hoping to give consumers as much time as possible to enroll before coverage begins in January.
“We were hoping to maximize that,” she said. “Clearly that was a bad call.”
This is an extraordinary admission from Sebelius. The decision to launch ObamaCare prematurely, despite numerous warnings that the site was not ready and had yet to be properly tested, has plummeted millions of Americans into a Kafka-esque kind of Hell. ObamaCare has not only resulted in the cancellations of the health plans Obama promised they could keep, but the debacle of a website has made it impossible for many to get online to replace those policies.
How many people who followed the rules and had insurance will find themselves without insurance through no fault of their own on January 1?
This “bad call” could have been avoided with a simple one-year delay in the implementation of the law. An informed sense of empathy from the Obama Administration would have saved millions of Americans from all kinds of anguish.
Sebelius also backed off the self-imposed November 30 deadline to get the website fixed. She now claims that November 30 is “not a magic go, no go date. It is a work of constant improvement.”
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.