0 vermont, thanks to you, as well. this three and a half hour hearing was historic, very important. we're going to continue our analysis of what happened. thanks very much. and to our viewers, i'm wolf blitzer in washington. we're covering these historic hearings that took place today up on capitol hill. kathleen sebelius clearly in the hot seat today. answering questions from members of congress, democrats and republicans, some very, very testy questions, all of our reporter and analysts are standing by. dana bash is up on capitol hill. gloria borger is here with me. so is elizabeth cohen. we've got our white house team in place. we're going to have full analysis right now. let's go to dana bash up on capitol hill. you watched these three and a half hours, dana. give us your thought how this went down because as i say, i this i a lot of people were watching. >> well, certainly people who are genuinely interested in trying to get answers that they don't have. there's no question hat secretary came with every intention of falling on her sword and she did several times, making clear that she was wrong would be up and running, that people would be able to activate it october 1st. see told tshe off the bat apolo. what i also thought was interesting beyond the sort of show you see in so many hearings, a real attempt on both sides, but mostly by democrats to try to explain something we have been hearing about particularly over the past week or so, that so many people across the country are losing their health care policies that they actually say they like. her trying to explain the reason is because those policies don't have the minimum requirements under the obama health care law. but she insisted because there are so many more options now because of obama care, people can eventually get lower priced health care policies. but that was very difficult for her to explain because it is a confusing process. you saw republican after republican showing stories, telling anecdotes about constituents having problems getting on website. that was an important kind of learning experience that people who are watching this could get. understanding why if they got a letter from their health insurance company they were losing their health care and what they could do in the future. of course, because you have a lot of republicans, in fact all of the republicans there opposed the law to begin with, it was a little bit interesting to hear them complain about the process that they didn't want to happen in the first place. >> dana, stand by for a moment. this is an exchange that kathleen sebelius, the secretary of health and human services had with congress woman marsha blackburn, republican of tennessee. >> so who is responsible for overseeing this project? is it you or your designee? >> let me be clear. i'm not pointing fingers at verizon. i'm trying to explain the way the site operates. we own the site. the site has had serious problems. >> who was in charge, madame secretary? >> the person now in charge as an integrate ser qssi, one of our -- >> who was in charge as it was being built at that team, who is the individual? >> michelle snyder. >> michelle snyder is the one responsible for this debacle. >> well, excuse me, congress woman. michelle snyder is not responsible for the debacle. hold me accountable for the debacle. i'm responsible. >> everythinging that you. i yield back. >> all right. that was a powerful exchange right there. gloria borger is here, elizabeth cohen is here. there were a lot of those testy exchanges between republican members of the committee and sebelius. >> at a certain point, there's only so many times kathleen sebelius could fall on her sword. she said it in 50 different ways. i'm responsible, the buck stops with her. she said she was miserably frustrated i think was the phrase by all of this. so you sort of got to that. she took responsibility for this. she also took responsibility for telling the president that they were ready to go. and said that no one anticipated this level of problems. i think what we saw today was a very december decentralized process where in fact, it seemed like in funneling all of this, not everybody knew the problems everybody else was having, and there didn't seem to be one kind of decisionmaker hog could say wait a minute, all of this is a real problem. and we shouldn't go ahead with it. >> a project manager i know, a very successful one said it seems like on had project there was no one wringable neck. if you don't have one, projects often go awry as this one seems to have. >> you would have thought that something as significant as the affordable care act, they would have had a point person reporting to kathleen sebelius every week, to the president pre week. we've got this, this, or at the end of september saying we're not ready into this . >> actually doing the nuts and bolts work of making that policy function correctly. i think those are two different thingsings. >> also inforing the american publicing about why, for example, that some insurers might cancel insurance. this is why. when you go into a risk pool as dana was talking about, why it might cost you a little bit more. but the extent of your coverage will be broader. you know, and all of these issues that where you have three years to kind of explain to people, and i know people don't pay attention until the very end. but it seems to me that the education process here was really lacking. >> let me go back to dana up on the hill. this is the first major hearing where kathleen sebelius herself was testifying but there are other house committees presumably senate committees want her to testify, as well, including congress man darrell issa's committee. where do we go from here? >> she is going to testify before a senate committee the counterpart committee, the finance committee likely next week. that is going to be probably friendlier territory because the senate of course, has majority of democrats. majority of democrats will be on the committee. maybe not so much in terms of the questioning. it depends where we are when we get there. certainly a lot of the focus of the democrats in the housen an probably will be in the future of the senate was to talk about the good things that the affordable care act is doing for americans. but also again to try to penetrate some of the massive confusion that is going on out there with regard to the law. so you're probably going to see a lot more of that. you know, what's interesting to me that there were a lot of questions at this house hearing about who should be fired, about whether you know, the guy who runs the website should be fired, about the one who -- woman who runs cms should be fired. because she, sebelius came out of the box an poizing saying she should be held accountable even though these been the poster woman for what she admitted was a debacle, you didn't see outright calling for home run her to resign but you saw a lot of show of questioning whether or not she's doing the right thing for one example, i'll give you rather is questioning by a couple of republican congress men why she hasn't signed onto the exchange, something you would think she would do to show she's in it with everybody else. she gave some perhaps legitimate answers about what is required of her and not. but whether it's required or not, you would think just for pure politics, she would have done that. republicans clearly pounced on that. >> i want you to listen to this exchange with gregg harper, the republican congressman from mississippi. >> was the president not ultimately responsible like a company's ceo would be? >> sir, he's the president of the united states. i have given him regular reports and those i am responsible for the implementation of the affordable care act. that's what he asked me to do and that's what i'll to imcontinue to do. >> you're saying the president is not responsible for hhs. >> i didn't say that. >> so the president ultimately is responsible, while i think it's great that you're a team player and taking responsibility, it is the president's ultimate responsibility, correct? >> you clearly whatever, yes, he is the president. he is responsible for government programs. >> she clearly, gloria was trying to protect the president from this clear, what's been a website fiasco. >> as we were just talking about before, you get to a certain point and she's just short of threw up her hands and said whatever. at a certain point, she took responsibility. she said she brought it to the president. she didn't anticipate this level of problems. she fell on her sword. move on. some people had some difficulty honestly in doing that. >> it looks like even if they were told repeatedly throughout the month of september there already some serious problems, she did repeatedly say those four contractors none of them said delay the launch of the website. >> there was a piece of this i thought was very interesting where she said the products were not locked and loaded into the system until the third week of september. when you don't have your products being locked and loaded till the third week of september and starting october 1st, that in and of itself should have told them they weren't going to be ready. >> that's why it was so remarkable that nobody ever, she said nobody ever told her specifically to delay the entire project. and obviously, there's a lot riding on it. but when you've informed the president of the united states you're ready to go, you should be ready to go. >> they clearly were not ready to go and paying a significant price for that right now. stand by for a moment. we're going to have extensive coverage of what unfolded during those 3 1/2 hours of grueling testimony by kathleen sebelius. much more right after this. 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