By James Freeman CONNECT – The Wall Street Journal
It’s been quite a year for the outgoing HHS secretary. And now she won’t get to keep her health plan.
Kathleen Sebelius, who has presided over the disastrous rollout of the Affordable Care Act, is expected to resign as Secretary of Health and Human Services. The news comes less than two weeks after she told the Huffington Post that she would “absolutely” stay in office through November. A Journal editorial notes that her departure “before the election reckoning” is “best understood as one more attempt to dodge political responsibility.”
It’s been quite a year for the former Kansas governor. At around this time in 2013 Ms. Sebelius was pressuring private companies she regulates to make “independent” donations to outfits promoting ObamaCare.
But the aggressive sales job could not overcome defects in the product. October brought the failed launch of the healthcare.gov website, which Ms. Sebelius initially characterized as simply the result of surging consumer demand for ObamaCare and a “great problem to have.”
December brought more embarrassing news as Ms. Sebelius waived the law’s individual mandate to buy insurance by categorizing ObamaCare itself as a hardship worthy of exemption.
This was just one of many on-the-fly rewrites the administration claimed the authority to make under a law passed by Congress and signed by the President. As recently as last month, Ms. Sebelius enacted what a Journal editorial called “ObamaCare Delay Number 38“—an extension of the deadline for individuals to enroll in an insurance plan— just weeks after she told Congress that such a delay would not occur.
Though she is leaving now, her legacy is secure, as her name adorns several of the most consequential federal cases resulting from the law. Halbig v. Sebelius is testing whether the Obama Administration can continue to subsidize insurance exchanges created by the federal government, even though the law says it cannot. And the cases of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius test whether the Obama Administration can force the owners of private businesses to violate their religious beliefs.
Of course there’s a reason that the law isn’t called SebeliusCare. She is merely the person charged by the President with imposing the law upon American patients and doctors. Her resignation doesn’t change the fact that Democrats will remain politically accountable for a law sold on a fraudulent promise from Mr. Obama.
But this latest news does mean that not even the Secretary of Health and Human Services will get to keep her insurance plan.
