FOXNews.com: Sebelius faces grilling over ObamaCare

FOXNews.com FOX News Channel - We Report. You Decide. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Want free Kindle ebooks? Sign up to receive the best freebie Kindle ebook deals in your email every day. From our sponsors

Sebelius faces grilling over ObamaCare Oct 30th 2013, 10:44 Published October 30, 2013 FoxNews.com The top health official in charge of ObamaCare implementation will face a chorus of critics Wednesday as she prepares to testify on Capitol Hill – amid complaints not only about the main federal website, but also a wave of cancellation notices. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, her first appearance before Congress since the troubled launch of state-based health exchanges on Oct. 1. Sebelius is likely to face tough questions about problems with the HealthCare.gov website, which was plagued by technical glitches again Tuesday night after the website's data hub experienced an outage that left consumers in Connecticut unable to apply for coverage. On Sunday, a similar outage at a Verizon Terremark data center brought the website down, even as White House officials claimed the website was up and running.  In written testimony released ahead of Wednesday's hearing, Sebelius vowed to improve the website and said the consumer experience to date is "not acceptable." But she defended the law itself and said extensive work and testing is being done. "We are working to ensure consumers' interaction with HealthCare.gov is a positive one, and that the Affordable Care Act  fully delivers on its promise," she said in the prepared remarks. Sebelius blamed the website contractors and the "initial wave of interest" for the glitches, but expressed confidence in the experts and specialists working to solve "complex technical issues." "By enlisting additional technical help, aggressively monitoring errors, testing to prevent new issues from cropping up, and regularly deploying fixes to the site, we are working to ensure consumers' interaction with HealthCare.gov is a positive one, and that the Affordable Care Act fully delivers on its promise," she said.  Among other issues, the initial wave of interest stressed the account 3 service, resulting in many consumers experiencing difficulty signing up, while those who were able to sign up sometimes had problems logging in. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., speaking on the Senate floor, called Tuesday for Sebelius' resignation. Alexander is the top Republican on the Senate health panel. "Mr. President, at some point there has to be accountability. Expecting this secretary to be able to fix what she hasn't been able to fix during the last three-and-a-half years is unrealistic," he said. "It's throwing good money after bad. It's time for her to resign -- someone else to take charge." Republicans were also voicing concern Tuesday about Americans being kicked off their current health plans, and newly uncovered documents that show the administration anticipated millions might lose their current coverage and be sent into different plans -- despite pledges to the contrary from the White House. Sebelius is also expected to testify before the Senate Finance Committee on the rollout of ObamaCare, committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said in a statement. The hearing is scheduled for Nov. 6. Her appearance Wednesday comes a day after Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services,  repeatedly refused to disclose how many people have enrolled in ObamaCare -- during a hearing where she did not deny that officials have that information. At the top of Tuesday's House Ways and Means Committee hearing, Tavenner apologized for the failures of the main ObamaCare website and vowed to fix them. But, raising more questions about the administration's transparency on the project, she declined to cite enrollment numbers. She did not claim, as Sebelius recently did, that officials simply do not have those numbers -- rather, she said a "decision" was made to release them in mid-November. "We made the decision that we were not releasing the numbers until mid-November," she said. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., asked again whether she had any idea what the numbers are. Her answer was the same. "I'll take that as you don't want to answer the question," Nunes said. Earlier in the hearing, Tavenner tried to downplay expectations. Facing ongoing problems with the enrollment website, Tavenner told Congress that "we expect the initial numbers to be small." An internal memo obtained by The Associated Press shows that the administration expected nearly 500,000 people to gain coverage just in October, the program's first month. If the administration is short of that target, it is unclear by how much. Tavenner, though, vowed to fix the troubled exchange website by the end of November. "To the millions who have attempted to use HealthCare.gov to shop and enroll in health care coverage, I want to apologize to you that the website has not worked as well as it should," she said. "We know how desperately you need affordable coverage. I want to assure you that HealthCare.gov can and will be fixed."  The apology would appear to be the first by an administration official. The Associated Press contributed to this report. FOX NEWS FIRST NEWSLETTER Daily must-read stories from the biggest name in politics Today White House knew ObamaCare claims were false

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions