Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), will testify Tuesday morning before the House Ways and Means Committee about the administration’s implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
A livestream of the hearing will be available at C-SPAN when the hearing begins at 10:00am ET.
According to the committee’s initial announcement of the hearing, it is expected to focus on the following:
This hearing will examine the status of efforts by CMS, HHS and the Obama Administration to identify the problems plaguing the launch of the Exchanges and the specific plans to fix the design flaws. The hearing will seek answers to why the Exchanges are not working, whether the Exchanges will be ready to fulfill all of their required functions and what steps are being taken to ensure that CMS and HHS will be able to accurately verify subsidy eligibility – prior to the distribution of premium tax credits and cost sharing subsidies.
In announcing the hearing, Chairman Camp stated, “After spending over $600 million, the American people want answers to some very basic questions about the launch of ObamaCare. Why doesn’t the website work? Why were the American people told everything would be ready, when it was clear that was not the case? How deep are the problems and how long will it take to get those problems fixed? And most importantly, if people can’t navigate such a dysfunctional and overly complex system, is it fair for the IRS to impose tax penalties?”
In a lengthy hearing last week before the House Energy and Commerce committee, lawmakers heard from four of the numerous contractors involved in either the development of or processes associated with healthcare.gov. Several of those contractors pointed blame at CMS for some of the key issues and decisions that contributed to the plagued rollout of the website.
On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee at 9:00am ET.
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Comments
My god, Rangle is repugnant.
Oops sorry, McDermott makes Rangel look sane.
Shorter McDermott: Medicaid is totally free and doesn’t cost anyone anything!
Paul Ryan shows Tavenner, who just got done saying that those under 26 can either stay on their parent’s plan OR get a subsidy, that she doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.
Priceless.
Rep Tiberi is over his head. He let Tavenner repeatedly claim that you can comparison shop prices without applying, without pointing out that there are unless you are exactly 27 or 50, you will be given the wrong information.
Better Republican questions please.
Reichert giving it the old college try, but is instead bumbling all over himself and cannot maintain a cogent line of questions.
“…is it fair for the IRS to impose tax penalties?”
How the hell did we get here?
Fireworks! Dem rep losing his mind on the floor!
Crowley and Tavenner now enjoying a good laugh at the expense of millions of Americans who just want to know what the hell is going on and why their President repeatedly lied to them.
Fuck them.
Hard to decide which is worse, Democrat apologists for this clusterfuck, or the Republicans who are obviously unprepared to ask serious questions and can only engage in nonrelevant speechifying.
Repugnicans (a GOP faction) are no longer elected to speak for us. They speak in an attempt to gain sway with the low-info sheeple by using grandstand tactics and sound bytes rather than substantive argument.
They will accomplish nothing (because the sheeple flock to Shepherd Claus) and these “representatives” are either smart enough to know it or have people working for them smart enough to know it. I know this will get me “tin foiled” but I’m convinced most of them are plants to sow discord among conservative demographics.
They need to be voted out yesterday.
Here’s a serious question; “The justification for the mandatory enrollment in anything under penalty, fine or worse is found where in our constitution?”
Here’s another: “Where does the Constitution allow the government to tear up a contract between citizens and their insurance providers on the grounds that the policy doesn’t include services they will never need?”
The Supreme Court rules this as a tax and therefore allowable.
Last week the contractors repeatedly placed the blame for specific problems on direction from CMS.
Number of times today that the Republicans have referenced that testimony and asked Tavenner for an explanation? Zero.
Way to go guys.
Thank you Diane Black! Finally a question following up on last week’s testimony!
Tavenner obfuscates and Black’s question time expires.
Oh well.
Try taking off the fu*king kid gloves for once, GOP.
But that would violate the rules of this theater, wouldn’t it? I’m getting the final, sinking feeling that everything the GOP is doing is play-acting. All of Issa’s investigations, all of Trey Goudy’s histrionics, Paul Ryan’s eye-rolling, even Rand Paul’s droll declamations — just performance theater. No one is really going to do anything, no one is ever going to shatter the code of decorum, no one is going to step up cand call out these criminals for who they are in the public square for all to hear. No one seems profoundly, viscerally outraged like the American people are. No one seems personally offended at what is happening to our republic — no one seems able to voice the simple, deep disgust at the shredding of our American social compact in every single thing Obama does. And so this almost surreal, disorienting disconnection between Washington and the country just goes on and on, and the anger and frustration build. No one on the Right wants to be “irresponsible” or “reckless,” as Obama and his army of aggressive Constitutional predators march on, sneering at the cowed and clueless “opposition.” Does Obama really care that Obamacare is a disaster? It’s the law, and the Republicans will never change it. It’s over as far as he’s concerned. He’ll just keep doubling down to perdition, taking the country with him. What does he care? And what do the Republicans care?
Only we care. Does it matter?
To what end? Nothing is going to happen here.
Obamacare is not going anywhere; it will continue to grow. Its website will slowly improve but always be an ancient, inefficient, disfunctional, disaster, and full employment opportunity for the second rate and connected. The legions who shuffle its paper and answer its telephones will continue to grow. Your personal and medical information will become public property, available to clerks and bureaucrats everywhere but denied to you, your family, care givers, and others who should have it.
Congressmen will continue to ‘thank you for your service, but let me ask…,’ yield to the ‘gentleman from …,’ swell out their chests and harrumph; shake their fingers, scold, and scold, and write letters; demand this, that, and the other; and parade around in front of cameras with their loyal, eager, young, stern-faced puppy-dog staffs fighting for position in the camera’s eye.
The witness gets her fifteen minutes of fame and a couple of pictures for the wall in her office and den.
Obama will take a nap, play a round of golf, attend a fund raiser, give a speech, yuck it up with his advisors, and order another statue for his trophy room to go with the Fast and Furious, IRS, Benghazi, Pigford, DOJ Civil Rights Div., and dozen others already there.
Congress and Republicans will emerge laughingstocks. The newsies and talking heads will have new material.
Nothing will change…until you need a doctor.
Am I the only one? I see photo’s of people in the Obama Administration, like the above Marilyn Tavenner, and I just yearn to see someone SLAP the arrogant look off their face! Slap them so hard their back teeth are loose and their eyes are rolling like the wheels in a slot machine.
DAMN! How do these arrogant elitist bureaucrats get the idea that they’re so much better than anyone else? They are designated to “serve”, not to “rule”. That’s not a hard principle to understand, is it?
“Medicare chief testifies before Congress on Obamacare rollout”
…and by “testify” you mean she’s there to LIE HER A^S OFF.
Name the last time any signification action occurred as the result of a congressional hearing or investigation. Kabuki.
It doesn’t rise to the level of Kabuki. It’s too banal, spiritless, degrading.
All they’re doing in a hearing is staging sound bites for ads to be used in their next reelection campaign.