Since the Affordable Care Act website went live, millions of people have tried and failed to receive correct estimates or completely enroll in the program, leading Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been asked to resign, the Los Angeles Times reported
Critics of the troubled Obamacare website have targeted the former Kansas state governor after a disastrous start.
According to the Times, David Axelrod, a former White House advisor, said the website issues have been a "mystery" and thinks they should be more straightforward about it.
"[If] I were in the White House, I would be communicating regularly on those fixes, but I also would be very, very tough on the people who are responsible to get those fixes done quickly," Axelrod said. "I'd be, as I'm sure they are, kicking a bunch of folks in the butt every day to make sure that what needs to be done is being done."
In a an interview with CNN's Sanjay Gupta on Tuesday, Sebelius said President Barack Obama was not aware of problems with the website before its launch. Sebelius said the president became aware of the site's issues in the early stages of its developments but not before the launch.
"No, sir," not before the launch, she told Gupta in response to whether the President was aware of the problems.
When asked specifically what the problem with the website was, Sebelius said it was volume and that she was working on making the website run smoother for consumers. She added that no one is going to lose coverage.
Throughout the interview Sebelius was vague about how much the administration knew about the site's issues before going live on Oct. 1 and said that White House officials were talking about having the sites testing continue before the launch.
Administration critics are asking for Sebelius to resign and are conducting an investigation to determine why the website was not ready for its launch, claiming it's an important tool in the Affordable Care Act. Contractors who worked on the site will testify before a House committee on Thursday with Sebelius due to appear next week.
Sebelius would not comment on whether she had discussed resigning with the president, but did say that the 1.1 million calls that have come into the call center for assistance with enrolling and the 19 million visitors to the website "are evidence of the overwhelming demand for affordable coverage."
Sebelius said that roughly 500,000 of those visitors have been able to create accounts on the site, but her department has not released the number of people successfully enrolled in insurance plans through the website.
Now, the question of whether or not the president will change the March 31 deadline for consumers to enroll without paying a penalty is being asked by critics. Sebelius said on Tuesday said that she doesn't think this is the question to be asking now, and said that people will be able to sign up for Obamacare in the next six months of the enrollment period.
