Obamacare Chief: Everyone Should Be Able to Sign Up Within Next 6 Months (Video)

Kathleen Sebelius tells CNN she won’t quit … and that she remains confident in the signup process’ progress

The woman behind the disastrous Obamacare signup website rollout, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta on “Anderson Cooper 360” that while “there certainly are some challenges,” she’s confident that everyone who wants to sign up for the coverage while be able to within the next six months.

Sebelius, who has taken a lot of heat for the site’s difficulties — including demands that she resign — ducked Gupta’s question about whether she would: “I think my job is to get this fully implemented and to get the website working right. And that’s really what I’m focused on.”

“I work at the pleasure of the president,” she added. “He is singularly focused on making sure we deliver on this promise. That’s what I’m committed to doing.”

Also read: Anderson Cooper Digs at Competition During Heated Obamacare Debate (Video)

Though Sebelius admitted that the website has had “some challenges” and “it isn’t where it needs to be,” she emphasized that there were other ways to sign up for health care that Americans could take advantage of while the contractors who built the problematic website bring in their “absolute A team[s]” — which apparently were not brought in before the websites went live.

Sebelius also declined to give numbers on how many people have signed up for health-care plans since the exchanges opened, but said over 500,000 people have signed up for accounts.

That doesn’t necessarily mean all of those people who have accounts have purchased a plan, of course. Sebelius herself has an account, but told Gupta she hasn’t tried to sign up for a plan because she already has insurance.

Watch the first part of the interview here:

Comments