Sebelius: WH didn’t oversell Obamacare

Sebelius sat down with NBC‘s Andrea Mitchell for an exclusive, prerecorded interview that aired on Sunday morning. Mitchell asked about the ups and downs of the Obamacare rollout, including whether or not it would have been wise to delay the rollout. Sebelius deftly dodged the question and transitioned into staid White House talking points: admitting that the site rollout was rocky, but acknowledging no further problems.

“Well I think there’s no question — and I’ve said this many times — that the launch of the website was terribly flawed and terribly difficult,” she replied.

The outgoing HHS Secretary pointed to the more than 7 million enrollees as a sign of the website’s ultimate success. She added that the site could have used more end-to-end testing, but argued that the marketplace behind HealthCare.gov is good.

“Clearly, the estimate that is was ready to go October 1 was just flat-out wrong,” Sebelius said.

For months prior to the site’s October 1 rollout, the Secretary herself had been promising that the exchange would be ready for use. But reality was far from it, as parts of the site were incomplete and users got continual error messages.

“Did the White House oversell it?” Mitchell asked.

“I don’t think they did,” Sebelius answered. “I think what we said from the outset was this was fixing a very broken market where individuals really were on their own.”

Sebelius said her low point during the process was during the eight weeks of issues with HealthCare.gov, adding that she knew there was no third try at getting the problems fixed.

Naturally, Mitchell also asked about Sebelius’ resignation and whether her departure was her choice or the White House’s. The outgoing Secretary said the end of open enrollment was a logical time for her departure. President Barack Obama has already nominated Sylvia Matthews Burwell to replace Sebelius at HHS.