Sebelius: I'm Not Signing Up for Obamacare
October 23, 2013 - 7:25 AM
(CNSNews.com) - In an interview with CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta Tuesday night, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she won't be enrolling in the problem-plagued health insurance system that she was charged to implement.
"I have created an account on the site. I have not tried signing up, because I have insurance," she told Gupta.
But Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says government officials like Sebelius should be required to live under the same laws they impose on everyone else.
Paul is now plugging a constitutional amendment that states, "Congress shall make no law applicable to a citizen of the United States that is not equally applicable to Congress." The amendment also contains two provisions that apply that same principle to the Executive Branch and Judicial Branch of the federal government.
Appearing on Fox News Tuesday evening, Paul told Sean Hannity he thinks this is an amendment "that really everybody ought to be able to agree to."
"There have been a lot of times in our history -- originally, congressional members were exempt from Social Security. That's not true now because people got mad about it. But really, the law should be applied equally to everyone," Paul said. "I think that's a basic precept of the law. So I really think maybe we'll get some bipartisanship on this and maybe we'll get it passed."
Asked if she found it "challenging" to create her healthcare.gov account, Sebelius admitted that she did: "Well, I think there certainly are some challenges. It could be smoother. It could be easier to access. And that's really what we're working on."
Sebelius said "no one could be more frustrated than I am, and the president, that this isn't smooth."
She also said President Obama first became aware of the problems "fairly early on," in the first few days of the Oct. 1 online rollout.
"Not before October first?" Gupta asked.
"No, sir," Sebelius said.
She said in an ideal situation, her department would have had more time to get the job done -- and would have used every minute of it:
"And if we had an ideal situation and could have built the product in, you know, a five-year period of time, we probably would have taken five years. But we didn't have five years. And certainly Americans who rely on health coverage didn't have five years for us to wait. We wanted to make sure we made good on this final implementation of the law. And, again, people can sign up. The call center is open for business..."
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