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Kathleen Sebelius is resigning. Sebelius must rank among the top 5 incompetent cabinet secretaries of all time. She should have resigned when the Obamacare website failed. Her agency had three years to put the website together and make sure it was up to snuff. That website has less traffic than Amazon and any number of online retailers. Yet it failed spectacularly. In fact, the website still fails on a regular basis. It remains difficult to sign up for Obamacare and it’s nearly impossible to cancel a policy on the website. The website alone ought to be enough for Sebelius to be fired. From a purely political standpoint, nothing caused Obama more grief than the Obamacare website.
Sebelius’ incompetence isn’t limited to the website. Obamacare was created in order to provide insurance to those who previously did not have it. You would think the administration might like to know how many previously uninsured Americans bought Obamacare policies. To date, Sebelius has no idea. How can it be that this administration didn’t keep track of how many people it helped via Obamacare? Is it so low that Sebelius is lying about not knowing the number? Maybe it really is as embarrassing as the under 1 million floated around a couple weeks ago. We know it isn’t 7 million as between 5-6 million previously insured had their policies canceled.
Most Democrats are thrilled to get rid of Sebelius. Her incompetence has been glaring for the last six months, thus creating re-election problems for any number of Democrat Congressmen and Senators. They won’t say that out loud though. We’re much more likely to hear that the Sebelius resignation is a sign of victory. She got Obamacare up and running in the face of supposedly unprecedented opposition and now she’s riding off into the sunset. They’re going to portray her as Ray Lewis winning the Super Bowl, going out a winner. The spin ought to be delicious. Reality though is that Sebelius was a disaster and most Democrats are thrilled to see her go away.
The President is likely to appoint Sylvia Burwell, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, as Sebelius replacement. There isn’t much out there on Burwell right now, you can bet that will change in the next few days. It’s pretty safe to say that her confirmation hearing will be a little on the testy side. Burwell is going to have to get five Republicans to vote for cloture, which could be a tough task depending on what comes out about her. You would hope one of the Republicans would ask her whether she believes deadlines laid out in the law are set in stone or mere suggestions. You would also hope she would be asked by what authority the executive branch unilaterally makes changes to this or any other law.
Burwell might be able to turn the website around, she might be able to fix some of the glaring customer service problems. What she isn’t going to be able to do is fix an unworkable program like Obamacare. This program was designed to force the uninsured to buy insurance. The uninsured aren’t buying. The cost of insurance under Obamacare have skyrocketed. Premiums have increased, deductibles are up substantially and coverage has decreased. Burwell isn’t going to be able to fix those problems. Then again, Sebelius set the bar so law that Burwell couldn’t possibly do a worse job.
Thank you. I did not want to go to the blog.
Burwell isn't going to be able to convince doctors to take a 30% cut in pay. If she tries to force them, thousands will go Galt.