Posted on 11/07/2013 9:52:41 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, this morning expressed confidence in the prospects for a fully functioning government health-insurance website. What's more, the Iowa senator said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who oversaw the launch of the troubled site, HealthCare.gov, should retain her cabinet position.
"I take a issue with it being a disaster," Harkin said during a conference call with The Daily Times Herald and other media. "It certainly is a setback, a bump in the road."
Harkin said the hundreds of reported glitches with HealthCare.gov collectively amount to a "mechanical problem."
The online marketplaces opened Oct. 1 and have been challenging to access, raising concerns that not enough young, healthy Americans will sign up to moderate costs under what is widely known as Obamacare.
"This is a machine," Harkin said. "The health-care law, the Affordable Care Act, is more than just a website. It's a whole new regime, a whole new value system of how we do health care in America. One part of it is the website."
President Barack Obama Wednesday met with Democratic senators to discuss efforts to repair the flawed site.
Sebelius, during a Senate hearing, said she accepted responsibility for a "miserable five weeks" and the "excruciatingly awful" initial experiences with the site.
"I think Sebelius did take responsibility for it," Harkin said. "But then they gathered forces together to find out why it didn't work right."
According to The New York Times, Sebelius said that the first official enrollment numbers, to be released next week, were "likely to be quite low, given the struggles that people have had getting access to the site and getting information."
Harkin, on the conference call, said he has reassurances that the site will be fixed. It goes down every night from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. for service. Americans can also apply by phone and through traditional mail, he said.
Many critics jumped on troubles with the HealthCare.gov rollout in an effort to use them as a referendum on the full reach of the historic overhaul, Harkin said.
"We're moving ahead with everything else," Harkin said. "The rest of the law is being implemented right now."
Problems with the website don't affect key provisions like preventing insurance companies from cutting off people with pre-existing conditions, the senator said.
"A lot of this is not being talked about because, well, quite frankly, the Republicans who wanted to kill this program from the very beginning will look at anything to try to hold it up as a failure of the law in total," he said.
Harkin said he expects problems to be ironed by the Obama-imposed Nov. 30 deadline - and that Sebelius is up to the job.
"I don't think she should be fired at all," Harkin said. "If she had tried to cover it up and tried to point blame at something else, and all that kind of stuff, I'd say 'yeah.' But you know, people make mistakes, machines break down."
That considered, Harkin said, the administration did not test the website thoroughly enough in the beginning.
"I sort of jokingly said they should have turned it over to Amazon.com and they probably could have run the whole thing a lot better," Harkin said.
“I don’t know if it was misleading so much as presumptive on his part,” Harkin said. “A lot of people had junk policies. As long as they were healthy they were happy.”
Obama probably was thinking that if people with “junk policies” knew what they were paying for they wouldn’t want to keep it, Harkin said. In many cases, if people looked at what was covered and not covered by their policies “they were paying to be uninsured.”
Yawnnnnnnn......
You guys are going off the rails....
This ahole is a True Believer.
Always was.
This ahole is a True Believer.
Always was.
“Its just a flesh wound”
It is amazing that what are considered “junk policies” are the ones that no one wanted or needed covering birth control and freebies for the freeloaders.
Really?
Had Rush said that you would be having a cow.
Hey Harkin...if it’s so good then sign up yourself.
The site needs a new boiler?
They keep saying that the majority of people are getting better policies than before.
I just figure, go to the exchange, see what your new “improved” policy is going to cost, and then go to the polls. You’ll know what to do.
If you’re thrilled by what obamacare has brought you, you’ll vote accordingly. If you see that it has ruined your life, again, you’ll know what to do.
What I see is that Dems are afraid to run on it, and Repubs are afraid to run against it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3088618/posts
Under this assumption, the Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013. The low-end estimates are for 49 percent and 34 percent of small and large employer plans, respectively, to have relinquished grandfather status, and the high-end estimates are 80 percent and 64 percent, respectively.
After all, the thing that's not working is the intertubes.
Isn’t this the same guy who said nothing really bad happened in South Vietnam after Uncle Ho took possession?
Tom, you Silver Tongued Devil, you crystallized the issue!
Daily Double: ‘Cetaceans & Politicians’
“He’s lower than whale waste matter lying in the very bottom of the Marianas trench.”
(Cue Jeopardy theme music)
PS “Shave The Whales!”
by Gov. Krispey Kreme
Available at finer book stores like Walmart and Walgreens and other places with ‘Wal’ in their names.
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