'Don't do this to me': Anguished Kathleen Sebelius caught on open mic pleading to aide as she is grilled by Congress on Obamacare debacle

  • Obama's point-person on Obamacare admits 'I am as frustrated as anyone. ... You deserve better. I apologize.'
  • Entire healthcare.gov website crashes minutes before Sebelius speaks, going dark in at least 20 states
  • 'Hold me accountable for the debacle. I'm responsible,' she said
  • Bombshell report from September 6 showed how website contractors listed major problems they knew would occur
  • House GOP digs in on Obama's promise that 'if you like your health care plan, you can keep it' as the Washington Post calls it a flat-out lie
  • On whether Obama is ultimately to blame, Sebelius snipes: 'Whatever. Yes, he is the president. He is responsible for government programs.'

By David Martosko, U.s. Political Editor and Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 21:48 EST, 30 October 2013 | UPDATED: 09:19 EST, 31 October 2013


Kathleen Sebelius knew that Wednesday's U.S. House hearing about the problems with the Obamacare website was going to be tough - but perhaps she wasn't prepared for just how tough.

The Health and Human Services Secretary, who is in charge of implementing the president's signature domestic policy, could be heard on a hot microphone as she turned to and aide and said, 'Don't do this to me' during a pause in the questioning.

It's not entirely clear what 'this' she was referring to. However, she was in the midst of fielding questions about whether she would sign up for an Obamacare insurance exchange for herself.

Sebelius offered a public apology and insisted that the performance of the website had 'improved.'

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Caught: Kathleen Sebelius, right, is seen at the House hearing Wednesday having an aside with an aide. She was grilled on the failure of the Obamacare website

Caught: Kathleen Sebelius, right, is seen at the House hearing Wednesday having an aside with an aide. She was grilled on the failure of the Obamacare website

But moments before her hotly anticipated appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the Obamacare website crashed and was apparently unavailable in at least 20 states. Even those congressmen who came to question her were unable to load the site in their browsers before the hearing.

Midway through the hearing, Missouri Republican Billy Long grilled Sebelius over whether she would sign up for the insurance exchanges offered on the Obamacare website. He asked her to answer 'yes or no.'

 

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It was then that Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman chimed in and asked for the floor.

That's when Sebelius turned to an aide sitting behind her and whispered, 'Don't do this to me.'

Waxman, from California, continued the line of questioning. 

'If you are able to do what the gentleman just suggested ... and went to buy an individual policy, would you be able to find one that would be able to protect you from cheap shots?' he asked.

Sebelius responded: 'I would gladly join the exchange if I didn’t have affordable coverage in my workplace.'

During the hearing, she offered up a mea culpa for the glitches in the site, which have prevented many Americans from signing up for third-party health insurance.

'I am as frustrated as anyone,' she told Americans. 'You deserve better. I apologize. I'm accountable to you for fixing these problems and I'm committed to earning your confidence back by fixing the site.'

As she faces calls for her resignation from several lawmakers, Mississippi Republican Rep. Gregg Harper pressed her on whether the buck ultimately stops with her, or with President Obama.

After several minutes of dissembling, she finally sniped while shaking her head: 'Whatever. Yes, he is the president. He is responsible for government programs.'

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Feeding frenzy: Seats at the Sebelius hearing were impossible to come by on Wednesday, as photographers crowded to catch a glimpse of the embattled HHS secretary

Feeding frenzy: Seats at the Sebelius hearing were impossible to come by on Wednesday. Her first statement was to apologize for the debacle

Hold still: Sebelius sat down to the sound of hundreds of shutters clicking. She's facing a barrage of attacks from angry Republicans and kid gloves from sympathetic Democrats on Capitol Hill

In the firing line: As Sebelius sat down to the sound of hundreds of shutters to give evidence before the committee, the website she admitted she was 'accountable for' went dark in 20 states

She outlined efforts that she said have 'improved the performance' of the website in recent weeks, producing 'fewer errors and timeout messages' for users. She even said healthcare.gov can now process applications at a rate of five per second.

Sebelius insisted that despite the 'unacceptable' problems with flawed website, the larger Obamacare law is 'working for millions of Americans.'

She told the congressional panel, however, that her agency still doesn't have hard numbers to show how many Americans have signed up for Obamacare insurance plans.

 

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'We do not have any reliable data around enrollment, which is why we haven’t released it to date,' she said, and refused to provide raw numbers to Congress that couldn't be verified through insurance companies.

The only number HHS has released describes 700,000 Americans overall who have completed the the process of finding out if they are eligible for the federal government's insurance subsidies.

'The system isn't functioning,' Sebelius said, 'so we're not getting reliable data.'

U.S. Health and Human Services

Staunch: Sebelius said that the website was 'improving' and that error messages were reducing as she desperately tried to put a positive spin on the disastrous roll-out 

U.S. Secretary

Low blow: Sebelius went on to agree that ultimately President Obama was responsible for the website failure, saying: 'Yes, he is the president. He is responsible for government programs'

Disbelief: Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana couldn't believe what he was hearing on Wednesday, as Sebelius defended the Affordable Care Act

Disbelief: Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana couldn't believe what he was hearing on Wednesday, as Sebelius defended the Affordable Care Act

An annoyed President Barack Obama has shown signs of losing confidence in his top health deputy, and her turn on the congressional hot seat new will either sink his signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act, or calm his nerves.

Sebelius fanned the flames mounting against her with an admission, under withering questions, that the buck stops with her.

Asked if Michelle Snyder, the chief operating officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was ultimately responsible for the failed website, she replied, 'Michelle Synder was not responsible for the debacle. Hold me accountable for the debacle. I'm responsible.'

Four Pinocchios: The final insult from The Washington Post

The Washington Post's official public fact-checker declared on Wednesday morning that President Obama lied when he promised that his health care plan would permit Americans to keep health insurance plans they liked.

'No matter how we reform health care,' the president said in 2009, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.'

'If you like your insurance plan, you will keep it,' he said in 2010. 'No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen in the future.'

The Post's Glenn Kessler called those promises 'an extraordinarily bold — and possibly foolish — pledge, unless [Obama] thought he simply could dictate exactly how the insurance industry must work.'

Obama's pledge ultimately 'ignores the regulations written by the administration to implement the law,' according to the Post. Those rules have caused insurers to cancel millions of insurance policies, killing consumers' chances of keeping them active.

'The president's promise,' says the Post, 'apparently came with a very large caveat: "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan — if we deem it to be adequate."'

Obama's memorable pledge was awarded a 'Four Pinocchios' rating, the newspaper's lowest measure of truthfulness.

Committee chair Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, framed the hearing as an accountability exercise for Sebelius, outlining some of the problems with the Obamacare rollout and placing responsibility at her feet.

'Over the months leading up to the October 1 launch, the secretary and her colleagues at HHS repeatedly looked us in the eye and testified that everything was on track,' Upton said.

'But something happened along the way – either those officials did not know how bad the situation was, or they did not disclose it.'

The healthcare.gov website, he said, was unavailable Tuesday night at 5pm when his staff checked on it.

'Even this morning' before the hearing, Upton said, 'we were hit with an error message.'

Indeed, before the hearing the website was completely unavailiable in at least 20 states, according to a variety of news agencies and reports from Twitter and Facebook.

'The website never crashed,' Sebelius would insist later. 'It is functional, but at a very slow speed and very low reliability.'

Rep, Marsha Blackburn, a feisty Tennessee conservative, attacked Sebelius over the Affordable Care Act's minimum insurance standards, which have driven policy cancellations as insurers have reconfigured coverage in order to comply with the Obamacare law.

Those minimum requirements include mental health care, vision coverage, pediatric dental care and other features – previously seen as options – which many consumers don't want.

'Some people like to drink out of red Solo cup, not a crystal stem,' Blackburn jabbed.

But New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone called concerns about widespread policy cancellations a 'red herring.'

'Insurance companies are canceling lousy policies with high prices,' he claimed.

Sebelius told Congress on Wednesday that she didn't know how many Americans would receive cancellation notices when their insurers phrase out their policies in order to comply with the Obamacare law.

About 12 million people, she said, buy insurance on the individual market.

Driving his crazy: Illinois Republican Rep. John Shimkus couldn't believe his ears on Wednesday when Sebelius said 'Whatever; in response to a question about whether the buck stops in the Oval Office

Driving his crazy: Illinois Republican Rep. John Shimkus couldn't believe his ears on Wednesday when Sebelius said 'Whatever; in response to a question about whether the buck stops in the Oval Office

Sebelius said she was 'responsible' for the Affordable Care Act's dodgy launch, fueling talk in Washington that her job is on the line

Sebelius said she was 'responsible' for the Affordable Care Act's dodgy launch, fueling talk in Washington that her job is on the line

On Tuesday, documents were released showing that one of HHS' top contractors warned that healthcare.gov faced fatal flaws in the weeks before its disastrous launch.

In the September 6 report to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a subagency of HHS, tech contractors explicitly laid out the fact that they had 'limited testing timeframes,' classifying it as a 'near certainty' that problems would result.

The previously secret report was released on Tuesday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is investigating the problems behind the rollout of the website that has frustrated millions in their attempts to investigate new health insurance policies.

'Due to the compressed schedule, there is not enough time built in to allow for adequate performance testing,' it says in plain English.

The report will provide ample fodder for Republicans who are attacking the Obama administration for failing to have the medical insurance shopping site up and running fully when it launched on October 1.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Fred Upton slammed Sebelius and her HHS deputies who 'repeatedly looked us in the eye and testified that everything was on track' during earlier hearings

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Fred Upton slammed Sebelius and her HHS deputies who 'repeatedly looked us in the eye and testified that everything was on track' during earlier hearings

A few friendly faces: Sebelius has staunch defenders among committee liberals including Rep. Henry Waxman (far L), the ranking Democrat

A few friendly faces: Sebelius has staunch defenders among committee liberals including Rep. Henry Waxman (far L), the ranking Democrat

Sebelius' prepared statement for the congressional committee that will grill her on Wednesday morning showed little indication of the problems that have beset the Obamacare rollout.

'The fact is that the Affordable Care Act delivered on its product: quality, affordable health insurance,' her remarks read.

'The tremendous interest in HealthCare.gov shows that people want to buy this product.'

CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner inspired little confidence with her own congressional testimony on Tuesday, refusing eight separate times to say how many Americans have signed up for medical insurance policies during the initial rollout period.

And cost concerns continue to mount about the multimillion-dollar healthcare.gov website.

'So far we have spent about $118 million on the website itself,' Sebelius said Wednesday, adding that contractors have received another $56 million for other technology to support it.

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Whatever? Fer shure, fer shure. Who knew that the Department of Health and Human Services was being run by a valley girl?

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she looked great and handled the situation with elegance in spite of the grammar school GOP bullies taking cheap shots. Wow.

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Obama sent the aide to tell her to announce that she was signing up for Obamacare.

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Whatever. The liberal dismissive response when no rational reply will work.

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No - don't do this (ObamaCare) to us!

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ASAP is as soon as possible, under line soon and possible, no telling how long it will take. And he will say, "I never promised a specific date." And, so it goes...

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Great to see this Judas getting her comeuppance!!

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Don't do this to US, you incompetent, lying hack. Just like your boss in the White House. Go away! All of you!

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Please get this infected Sebelius off of us!!!! Lance her, imprision her, whatever it takes.

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Oh Wait!!! I think that woman behind King Obama has a huge Sebelius on her forehead!

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Such BS! She could give up her federal employee healthcare and join the exchange. The same should be forced on the President and his family too! He smooches off the public with free housing, free car ect. already.

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