october and november and we can all say that, but then she got it right and they exceeded the number that was their goal and things are more or less working now. if you give somebody a second chance and they take advantage of it and they do a good job, why do they still have to go? i totally agree with beth that there were those calls months ago. you know, that sebelius should step down and obama was very resistant to having someone walk the plank. i think the view and this is what i heard from some administration officials, was that by early march, sebelius felt things had taken a turn for the better and it was the right time to hand off the leadership. she s become and i think this would have been true of any hhs head during this time. she s become a very polarizing figure. she s essentially the public face of obamacare, and that comes with, you know, just being very polarizing at this moment. so i think the expectation was once we got through open enrollment that things were a
disappointed that it didn t go farther, that it kept the private insurance industry alive. now they re saying we ve got this place and it seems to be working pretty well. do you think there s still a thirst there nationally for democrats to use the affordable care act as almost like a steppingstone to single payer eventually, or do you think that the appetite for health care reform in the democratic side has been satisfied with what s been done? i think there s an appetite for single payer. at least for a public option. but i was really thinking about this during the argument around hobby lobby, the supreme court case about whether or not employers need to provide contraceptive coverage. and it struck me as really showing the fallacy of this employer-based health care. why are employers getting involved in somebody s birth control decision? i mean, it s a very strange kind of intimate place for your employer to be. and so to take the employer out of it, to make it a place where eve
stepped down, obamacare s still controversial. and the american people overwhelmingly don t want it. well, you got a smile out of liz for that. i think she chuckled at your analogy. let s talk about sylvia burwell. she was confirmed 96-0 when she was nominated to that post. but it wasn t without some bumps. i want to play a little bit of an interchange between her and gop senator jeff sessions who is now raising concerns he thinks her nomination represents the president wants a political ally in this new post heading up hhs. and he s afraid she won t say no to the president if it s necessary. he says it s in light of context of the questioning about some budget issues. here s a little bit of that exchange. so you re proposing that we all so you can spend $56 billion more next year alone. what we are proposing yes or no, is that correct? we propose
she is stepping down tomorrow. sebelius has been under fire. over the disastrous launch of the health care law. the not so grand opening. horrible rollout. full of problems. that is her legacy. that will absolutely define her for all time. that was the takeaway on kathleen sebelius on thursday. instead of talking about the nearly half a million more people who now have insurance because of health reform, the media was once again focusing on the shaky rollout of implementing the affordable care act. it was all the result of the white house stepping on its own message. president obama choosing this week to accept the secretary s resignation and announced he s nominating silvia burwell to replace her.ylvia burwell to replace her. we re going to do a challenge. i m going to try and download
every movie ever made and you re going to try and sign up for obama care and we ll see which happens first. okay. okay. so why now? why is kathleen sebelius resigning six months later when the news about the affordable care act is suddenly worth crowing about? is she really getting the chance to go out on a high note or is her very departure reminding everyone of the law s shaky start and why does the white house seem unwilling to celebrate a hard won success? we still have molly ball with the atlantic and joining the table is beth fui, and sarah cliff, senior editor at the new website vox. so this sebelius departure this week look, she issued an e-mail i think to the hhs department. she spelled her successor s name wrong. she was at the press conference. turned out she had forgotten a page and had to stop her speech awkwardly. some people said this was a very fitting reminder of her tenure. i can t help but look at this and say look, if you were going to fire her, if you thought