Top health exchange official apologizes for Obamacare website woes
Video: A senior Obama administration official will answer questions from the House Ways and Means Committee this week about the health care enrollment website. Representatives want to know what went wrong and whether the administration can be trusted to fix it.
Members of the House Ways and Means Committee immediately lit into Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Marilyn Tavenner, demanding to know why Americans should trust that the troubled website, or even the entire health care law, will ever work.
“While the website can eventually be fixed, the widespread problems of Obamacare cannot,” panel chairman Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican, said in his opening statement. “These problems can’t be fixed through a tech surge.”
Tavenner apologized. “I want to apologize to you that the website has not worked as well as it should,” she said, and promised the administration is working on the site.
"This healthcare.gov site is fixable," she said.
But Texas Republican Kevin Brady asked Tavenner why the site wasn't ready sooner. "You have had nearly four years to get it ready," Brady said. "Why should the American people believe you now?"
Tavenner said technicians had added capacity to the website, and that experts were tackling glitches one by one. "That is the gradual improvement you will see over the next four weeks and that is why we are confident," she said.
Brady said he doubted government could ever manage something as complex as healthcare. "The flaw is not in the website," he said. "The flaw is in the law itself."
There was a little drama. Georgia Democrat John Lewis spoke passionately in favor of the law. "I happen to believe that healthcare is a right and not a privilege," Lewis said, thumping the desk in emphasis. "It is not just for the fortunate few but all citizens of America," he added. "The Affordable Care Act is working."
Camp also noted recent reports that tens of thousands of people have had their policies cancelled. "In fact, based on what little information the Administration has disclosed, it turns out that more people have received cancellation notices for their health care plans this month than have enrolled in the exchanges," Camp said.
"The widespread acknowledgement that the health care exchanges were not tested months in advance, as promised, is cause for concern. But the concerns don’t stop there. The Treasury Inspector General warned in August that it was not confident about the IRS’s ability to protect confidential taxpayer information or to prevent fraud, and neither am I," he said.
"No amount of website fixes can make right the President’s broken promises that health care costs will be lowered by $2,500 or that Americans will be able to keep the plan they have and like."
The White House says tens of thousands of policies issued to individuals are being cancelled because they don't meet the law's new tight requirements for coverage. Health industry experts told NBC News the White House should have known so many people would have to buy new policies, often pricier ones.
Tavenner said the policies being cancelled don't cover people properly. "Sometimes they thought they had coverage when they did not," she said. "Now some of them (the new policies) are moving to the new standards."
Camp also repeatedly asked Tavenner about how many people had actually enrolled in a health insurance plan. Tavenner stood firm, saying those numbers would not be ready until mid-November.
On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The administration says it's brought in a team of top technical experts and promises the site will be fixed by the end of November.
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