WASHINGTON, DC -- At a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, U.S. Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) today confronted U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius over the failure of the Obamacare exchanges and again called on her to resign.

“People are angry. Millions of Americans are scared,” Roberts said. “They don’t know whether they are going to have coverage in a matter of weeks. They don’t know what that coverage will include. They now are getting letters from their insurance companies they don’t understand. In fact, more people are losing their insurance than are signing up on the website. And they are being directed to a website that doesn’t even work.

“We don’t often talk about life and death in the context it deserves, but at this time it is real, and it means the difference between life and death for many Americans who are at a loss for what to do. And we know, Madame Secretary, that fixing the website won’t ever fix the uncertainty and ramifications that result from this law.”

In early October, Roberts was the first member of Congress to call for Secretary Sebelius’ resignation after the failure of healthcare.gov and amid concerns about the security and privacy of personal health and financial information in the exchange.

The following are Senator Roberts’ remarks as prepared for delivery:

Madame Secretary, I want to remind everyone how we got here today.

Over a year ago, staff for Members of this Committee requested information on the roll-out of the exchanges. Instead of details we only received ‘assurances’ that everything would go smoothly.

In March, of this year, we started hearing people directly involved with the development and implementation of the exchanges were deeply worried about the website’s launch.

In June, the Government Accountability Office issued a report. It should have served as a warning to you as it highlighted implementation challenges that we now know were never addressed.

I want to stress it certainly was a warning to me.

By July, it was clear to me that your department was being less than transparent about whether the exchanges would be ready by October 1.

As a result, I introduced the Exchange Sunset Act of 2013.  My bill would have sunset the exchanges and the individual mandate if beneficiaries were unable to enroll starting October 1, as promised.

In August, the HHS Office of Inspector General identified privacy and security vulnerabilities and determined that ‘critical tasks remain to be completed in a short period of time.’

In early September, your main website contractor, CGI, warned the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) they were falling behind on their ‘highest’ priority items.

The warning included they may not have enough time in the schedule for testing and that services were intermittently unavailable.

And yet, several days later the White House announced that the data hub was ‘ready for operation.’

In mid-September, CMS ordered a contractor to make a significant change to the system to require people to submit their personal information before viewing any plans or associated costs.

On September 26^th, mere days before the launch, testing showed that a few hundred visitors crashed the site. The very next day – the decision was made to move forward with the launch of HealthCare.gov, knowing that there was a high security risk during testing.        

In short, Madame Secretary, I believe you were given advice, counsel and warning – from experts inside your agency and out – that the health care exchanges were not going to be ready.

Furthermore, I believe, to protect the Administration you chose to ignore these warnings. And as a result, you have put our entire health care system, and 1/6 of our economy, in jeopardy.

People are angry. Millions of Americans are scared. They don’t know whether they are going to have coverage in a matter of weeks. They don’t know what that coverage will include. They now are getting letters from their insurance companies they don’t understand. In fact, more people are losing their insurance than are signing up on the website. And they are being directed to a website that doesn’t even work.

We don’t often talk about life and death in the context it deserves, but at this time it is real, and it means the difference between life and death for many Americans who are at a loss for what to do. And we know, Madame Secretary, that fixing the website won’t ever fix the uncertainty and ramifications that result from this law.

So, I have to wonder, if you have any regrets. Any regrets at all that you failed to heed the warnings, that you ignored the calls from Members of Congress, and you proceeded to open the exchanges on October 1, immediately followed by a taxpayer-funded promotional tour to tell everyone, ‘It’s sort of a great problem to have.’

Kansans don’t think these are great problems to have.

And from your home town of Topeka, Stephen wrote:

‘I … am completely disgusted. I have spent the last two days trying to get my application to go through... This would not be a critical issue except the insurance coverage that I currently have is going away because of the new federal requirements (though we were promised ‘if you like your current coverage, you can keep it’).’

Madame Secretary, you, yourself, know that this law has serious problems. You delayed over half the mandated deadlines. You did it for employers, for unions, and for small businesses. But not for the exchanges. And not for Stephen nor the millions of other Americans who are losing their health care.

The worry and the fear are palpable.

Your main goal should have been to protect Americans, to lessen their risk and ensure their safety, but in your zeal to implement this law, not warnings, not advice, not counsel, would deter you from implementing the exchanges.  

You have said America should hold you accountable, which is why today, Madame Secretary, I repeat my request for you to resign.

Senator Roberts is a senior member of the Senate Committee on Finance. He is the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on Health. Roberts is also a key member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and is the co-chair of the Senate Rural Health Caucus.

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