The Daily Show: Sebelius Swings and Misses
Last night, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius appeared on The Daily Show to talk about Obamacare (you can watch Part 1 and Part 2 of the extended interview). She attempted to defend the Administration’s botched opening of the law’s exchanges, but like the rollout itself, most of what she said in the law’s defense ended up falling flat:
“We have a terrific market.” Thus far, the facts speak otherwise. Even Sebelius was forced to concede the exchanges’ flaws, when she admitted to host Jon Stewart that she didn’t know how many people have “fully enrolled” in exchange plans. Sebelius claimed that “this is like a Kayak site, where you might check out what plane you want to get on.” However, I’m guessing that Kayak knows exactly how many customers have purchased plane tickets from its site.
“For about 85 percent of us, we don’t have to sign up for anything, because we have insurance that works…I think the President did not want to dismantle the health care that 85 percent of the country had and start all over again.” That may not have been intent of Obamacare—but it has been one of the law’s effects. Companies are already dropping health insurance for part-time workers and for spouses, causing individuals to lose their employer-provided coverage and raising the cost of federal insurance subsidies.
“We know about 6 out of 10 people will get a policy for under $100 a month—never happened before.” We also know that most of those individuals will be dumped into the Medicaid program—a form of coverage that its own members don’t even call “real insurance,” because low reimbursement rates prevent Medicaid patients from seeing actual doctors.
“Nothing that helps an individual get health insurance has been delayed at all.” That’s simply not accurate. The insurance subsidies may not have been delayed, but many elements of the insurance shopping experience—from a choice of insurance companies for those working for small businesses, to the basic health plan, to caps on out-of-pocket spending—have been delayed. All these Obamacare features were thrown overboard in an attempt to make the core elements of the exchanges work—which they haven’t.
The sharpest part of the interview came when Stewart pressed Sebelius on the delay in the law’s employer mandate, and the disparity in treatment between big business and the rest of America: “Geez, it looks like because I don’t have a lobbying group…I would feel like you are favoring big business because they lobbied you to delay it because they didn’t want to do it this year but you are not allowing individuals that same courtesy.” That is of course consistent with the attitude the Administration has taken towards the law from the start—reward “squeaky wheels” who hire lobbyists and make political noise by exempting them from some of Obamacare’s most harmful effects.
Stewart’s opening comment summed up the exchanges’ flaws: “I’m going to try and download every movie ever made and you’re going to try and sign up for Obamacare and we’ll see which happens first.” Sebelius may have played the part of a loyal trooper, but the facts speak for themselves.
This post was originally published at The Federalist.