Posted on 01/16/2015 8:11:49 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
The leader of the agency charged with the ObamaCare rollout is stepping down after five years on the job.
Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), announced her departure Friday, which will take effect next month.
"It is with sadness and mixed emotions that I write to tell you that February will be my last month serving as the administrator for CMS," Tavenner wrote in an email to staff.
Tavenner is leaving after five turbulent years overseeing the agency. Her tenure included the disastrous rollout of the government’s HealthCare.gov website as well as, most recently, an inflated tally of total Obamacare enrollment.
In her letter to staff, she cited the passage of ObamaCare in 2010 as the source of "many additional challenges," for the agency, while praising her staff for rising to the occasion.
"With those changes came a whole new set of responsibilities and a spotlight that brightly shown on all of us," she wrote.
"But with your hard work, dedication, commitment and resolve, you cleared the path and laid out a plan for all that we needed to accomplish. As a result, you are truly transforming healthcare in this country," she added.
With the rollout of ObamaCare, Tavenner also oversaw the country's largest expansion of Medicaid since its formation.
She has noted a series of other successes, such as a record of "clean financial audits," major steps to improve the healthcare delivery system and stronger efforts to combat fraud.
Tavenner has been one of the best-known faces of ObamaCare on the Hill as well as a close ally to Heath and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell as she navigated her first year.
The CMS chief has endured numerous hearings on ObamaCare, including a rough appearance alongside the administration’s embattled former adviser, Jonathan Gruber, before the House Oversight Committee in December.
Still, she maintained backing from many of the GOP's top leaders.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) praised the departing official in a statement released just minutes after her announcement.
“Marilyn has done a great job in a very difficult position under near impossible circumstances,” Hatch, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, wrote in a statement.
“She has proven herself to be a strong leader and a straight-shooter who brought in much needed private sector sensibility into the agency,” he wrote.
Tavenner’s chief of staff, Aryana Khalid, also announced Friday that she would be leaving the agency.
The pair of departures come about a month after that of CMS’s deputy administrator, Cindy Mann. The agency’s No. 2 official left her post in January.
Bail out before the conflagration....
The ObamaCare chair is going to be like a bureaucratic electric chair. There is no hope of success. The program is guaranteed to careen from failure to scandal and back again. Whoever is in charge is just there as a handy placeholder to take the blame.
And when a ship is sinking, the ‘Rats are the frist to leave.
I’m sure the retirement pension will be generous...
Part of the revolving door. She’s making pocket money (relatively) for the fedgov, now she’ll rotate into consulting, lobbying, etc for the big bucks.
Her retirement from the fedgov may look generous to you, but her real income will be in the future in the private sector.
The Wash DC revolving door.
Exactly. They are getting out before the next wave of problems hits Obamacare. And that wave could be a tsunami.
She should have been FIRED a long time ago.
Hell.... Her job shouldn’t even exist!
Nah, Nero is going to put them in protective custody just like they did with the Benghazi survivors.
When they are asked to appear before committees for hearings they will be lost.
A billion dollars and 4 years and they couldn't build a website. The US defeated Germany, Japan and Italy in less time.
Big government at work.
She was a domo with Hospital Corp of America for 25 years (they do $33 bil annual revenue), she’ll be in demand in the private sector.
The O/Care con artists are on a crime spree to work the dismal numbers----lots more tricks up their sleeves. I feel nothing but pity for the enrollees who got conned into this scheme.......the number of enrollees into ZeroCare has been so low Tavenner had to pump the numbers to make the plan appear more popular....
At the recent House hearing Tavenner was forced to sit next to O/Care deceiver---Jonathan Gruber.
Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was pressed to explain why she provided an inaccurate enrollment count to the committee earlier this fall. The figure was off by nearly 400,000, a miscount that was just enough to push the number over the administration’s initial target of 7 million enrollments.
Tavenner and the Department of Health and Human Services say the error was unintentional, but Republicans, such as Issa and Mica, have said they are skeptical.
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) planned to grill Tavenner on how the CMS plans to help customers who might see their tax bills increase if their federal healthcare subsidies change.
The issue, little known outside of policy circles, will pose a problem for many of the people who signed up for a benchmark plan in 2014 through the insurance marketplace but choose not to switch their coverage in 2015.
If the new yardstick plan is cheaper, people will qualify for fewer subsidy dollars and find themselves unexpectedly owing money to the IRS the following tax season.
“The significance of this is troubling to me, when you realize what CMS is doing and not doing to inform people that they will get a tax bill [if they do not actively re-enroll],” Meadows said in an interview Monday.
“There’s a difference between telling people ‘you might get a better premium price’ — which is true and everyone should do that — and telling people they’re about to get the wrong subsidy if they don’t re-enroll.”
Indict her for perjury, Obstruction of Justice, Fraud, ...
Remember "Scooter" Libby!
Any guesses on the color of her successor?
Hello 5,000,000 a year job as a lobbyist.
When oh when is Utah going to rid of us of this spectacular RINO mole?
Who in their right mind would want to be connected to or have anything to do with odumbocare management? What a flustercluck it is.
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