The House Energy and Commerce Committee has scheduled a hearing on Thursday on the federal government’s health exchange website. They’ve asked Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that is principally responsible for the website, to testify. Sebelius has declined, saying she is not available to testify.
It’s not clear to me why Sebelius has declined the request. The CNN story linked above doesn’t say Sebelius has a conflict on her schedule. Instead, the HHS spokesperson said: “Given that the government was shut down until today, we were given a very short timeline to respond to this request.” Does that mean that the Secretary of HHS needs more than a week to be prepared to answer questions about how the website is working? If so, perhaps the problems with the website are even more extensive than has been reported.
I hope Sebelius’ response to the request doesn’t mean that the Obama Administration is going to stonewall providing meaningful information about the operations of all of the health exchanges and the status of the enrollment process, and I hope that Sebelius reconsiders her decision and decides to appear. The websites are a crucial component of the Affordable Care Act, and the federal government has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on them. Taxpayers and citizens have a right to know how the system is performing.
In my view, it’s also in the interest of Sebelius and other administration officials to explain what is happening. If there are problems, identify precisely what they are and describe what is being done to fix them and when the fixes will be completed. If the enrollment process has some successes to its credit describe what those are. No doubt friendly members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will be happy to ask some questions designed to fully elicit the good news, just as diehard opponents of “Obamacare” will be asking tough questions.
As a matter of good government, we should all support requiring administrative officials to promptly testify when Congress calls. We would all be better off if Congress exercised more oversight over our vast administrative state — from its surveillance programs, to its spending habits, to its error-plagued websites, and beyond — and regularly subjected agency heads to tough questioning about federal programs. I can’t believe there is anything on Secretary Sebelius’ schedule right now that is more important than appearing before Congress and providing a credible explanation of what is happening with Healthcare.gov and the other health exchange websites.
Webner House 