Give Kathleen Sebelius credit — she survived the furnace

[n2doc]

April 10
BY BARBARA SHELLY
The Kansas City Star

So this is it for Kathleen Sebelius. The former Kansas governor apparently will officially announce her resignation as U.S. health and human services secretary on Friday.

The headlines make her sound like a combat casualty, ending her “stormy tenure” after the “disastrous rollout” of HealthCare.gov, stumbling away battered and bloodied.

But, seriously, the woman has lived in a furnace for five years. She’s been dragged in front of Congressional committees, pilloried by pundits and politicians, abandoned by friends (looking at you, Sen. Pat Roberts) and asked to build a massive health insurance marketplace with scant resources. Frankly, a lesser individual would have bailed months ago.

No doubt, the rollout of the insurance exchange marketplace was horrible, and it exposed serious management weaknesses. But look, presidents since Harry S. Truman have been trying to reform America’s health care system so that people of all ages, incomes and health conditions have access to affordable medical care.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/04/10/4951371/give-kathleen-sebelius-credit.html

[Thinkingabout]

1. She had to move in directions not experience by others.

With the ruling states did not have to expand Medicaid getting ACA up and running became more difficult. I am hoping those states will soon sign on so everyone in the US has a chance to utilize healthcare. I thank her for her service and remaining strong through the process.

[IronLionZion]

2. She did an excellent job on health policy and administration, as she should

she was not experienced with managing IT contracts, and she should not have been tasked with that. Especially something that is a first for our country like this marketplace, which has very complex connections in the back end. Fortunately they should have learned some important lessons from this project about putting pieces together and conducting end to end testing.

Republican obstruction and their PR war didn't help.