Marilyn Tavenner, the federal official who oversees new health-insurance exchanges, publicly apologized on Tuesday for the troubled launch of healthcare.gov that is supposed to allow millions of uninsured Americans to buy coverage, The Washington Post reported.
"To the millions of Americans who've attempted to use HealthCare.gov to shop and enroll in health-care coverage, I want to apologize to you that the Web site has not worked as well as it should. We know how desperately you need affordable coverage," said Tavenner, while testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee.
Tavenner offered assurances that the web site "can and will be fixed... we are seeking improvement each week," she said. "This initial experience has not lived up to our expectations . . . and it is not acceptable," she said. "While these problems will require a lot of hard work, the bottom-line conclusion is this HealthCare.gov site is fixable," Tavenner added.
Tavenner represents the first Obama administration official to testify before Congress about the problems, which have plagued the rollout of the Affordable Healthcare law, which was billed as the president's signature domestic initiative. Tavenner had predicted that the launch would run smoothly on October 1, which explains the apology on Tuesday.
"CMS has a track record of successfully overseeing the many contractors our programs depend on to function. Unfortunately, a subset of those contracts for HealthCare.gov have not met expectations," she said.
Tavenner joined the administration in April, 2010 after serving considerable time in Virginia hospitals, news reports said.
"At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said "a significant portion" of the 5% of people with individual coverage will end up paying less for better policies when they shop around in the new exchanges," CNN reported.
"One of the issues that the Affordable Care Act was designed to address was the need to provide greater security to those Americans forced to seek insurance on the individual market," Carney said, as reported by CNN.
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