Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius announced her resignation Thursday.
Many say her reasoning for going was after a push from President Barack Obama to get out now, while the new health care law has had somewhat of a positive light in the last few months. Despite all the early chaos of the law and the website’s major technical problems, Sebelius was able to bow out at a time that left shining light on the law and the progress she made with it.
Obama brought her in right after his first election, to be the head of the Affordable Care Act. When the initial run of the law began, the website was the biggest joke America has seen in a long time. All the blame and criticism seemed to be directed at Sebelius.
Now that she has been asked to resign at this time, during somewhat of a positive phase for the act, it tells America that she was the problem, not Obama.
Plenty of legislators from both parties applaud her efforts and determination to do her absolute best with the new health care law. She had a job that required so much effort and work, because the law is one of Obama’s highest selling policies for his presidency. She proceeded to do the work, largely without any aid from the president.
“She had an impossible task: nobody can make Obamacare work,” Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican tweeted.
Now, most Republican officials have been fighting to the death to stop, prolong or abolish the law since before it took off, but even they can acknowledge that she really gave her whole heart to this project.
Her resignation, though she has declared it was voluntary, came with a push from Obama to clear his name off of the list of names to blame.
With her gone, and a completely new face to head the continuation of the new health care law, it will be easier for the press and other members of Congress to look at future problems with the law and not point the blame at a person.
While others still directly blame Sebelius for the website failures, which in turn, destroyed the entire functionality of the site. Even if this was the case, she had other technicians working on this project with her.
They clearly did not set this all up in time for the release date, and she also didn’t have enough support from the president to make sure that his No. 1 campaign project was actually being laid out correctly.
Obama has chosen Sylvia Mathews Burwell to be the new face of health care because of her past experiences that deal more closely with budget and management.
Both Republicans and Democrats think she may be a valuable asset to continuing the positive transformation of Obamacare, but there are just as many skeptics. Plenty think that there is no full turnaround for Obama’s health care implementations.
Sebelius took the fall for Obamacare’s difficulties, and is stepping down now at a time to leave him looking good. It was also planned perfectly before primaries so Burwell can gain some admiration before the Democratic primaries by the end of this year.
Reach the columnist at Aubrey.McCleve@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @theartsss
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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