The pundits are out in force.
Abbreviated pundit roundup: Sebelius resigns after 7.5 million ACA signups
It's a good news, bad news story. Kathleen Sebelius presided over both the disastrous Healthcare.gov rollout, and the triumphant surpassing of the projections after they had been written off. She has been kept out of the spotlight of late, including at the Rose Garden victory lap.
Her successor, Sylvia Burwell, is Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and was previously President of both the Walmart Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I don't know whether that is good news or bad about her policy positions. For example, would she override an FDA science panel on making emergency contraception medications available to women, as Sebelius did in 2011? I expect Burwell to do OK on managing further signups, and dealing face-to-face with a hostile Congress. First she has to be confirmed by the Senate, which was easy for her previous position, but provides endless opportunity for posturing and bloviation on Obamacare this time. Well, we'll see.
More opinion later, but first the numbers.
Signups
Update #0
My Response to Edward Morrissey
I stopped reading the article, because Mr. Morrissey is utterly full of garbage here.
What?!? Teapublicans cooking the books? Say it isn't so.
Edward Morrissey
Columnist
Contributor
The Fiscal Times
https://twitter.com/...
Edward Morrissey has been providing political analysis as a blogger, columnist, and radio host since 2003. He now writes at Hot Air as senior editor and correspondent and also hosts a daily online talk show. His radio show is on Minnesota’s AM 1280 The Patriot every Saturday afternoon.
Two New Studies Raise Red Flags on Obamacare
April 10, 2014
The Coming Obamacare Shock for 170 Million Americans
April 3, 2014
Obamacare: Taxpayers in the Hole for $1.5 Trillion
March 27, 2014
Yup. It's so.
It was the "Two New Studies" claims that brainwrap bailed on when they went too far into the Tinfoil Twilight Zone.
Ohio: ACA Medicaid Expansion grows to 106K, 120K more pending
Idaho: 25K more Off-Exchange QHPs documented
The Graph, updated w/New Medicaid Category: "Bulk Transfers / Special Enrollments"
Sebelius and Burwell
There are well over a thousand stories in the Google news feed today about Kathleen Sebelius resigning as head of HHS. Most have some kind of balance about her successes and failures with the Healthcare.gov rollout. Then there is this.
Fox News: Sebelius resigns: Democrats have their scapegoat, they can blame ObamaCare failures on HHS chief, by Erick Erickson of Redstate.
Just so that you know the Cognitive Dissonance remains in full flower over there in the muck.
And these.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor:
I thank Secretary Sebelius for her service. She had an impossible task: nobody can make Obamacare work.
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus:
No matter who is in charge of the law, Obamacare is doomed to never be anything but a failure.
Mitch McConnell:
Sebelius may be gone, but the problems with this law and the impact it’s having on our constituents aren’t. Obamacare has to go too.
Chuck Grassley:
Anybody put in charge of Obamacare would be set up to fail.
Doug Schoen at Forbes was much more measured than Erickson, which is saying very little, actually.
Health And Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Resigns
However, he could not resist quoting some of the more useless Republican views on the event, as above, nor could he resist repeating the shopworn cliches about Obamacare being a disaster in progress.
Have I mentioned…? Oh, yes. In fact, this is not as overtly nasty as Erickson, but is actually much dumber.
It is President Obama and the Democrats’s job to show that they are ready to work across the aisle and make the healthcare law effective. If they don’t do that, it frankly doesn’t matter who is in charge.
Greg Sargent, The Plum Line, WaPo:
Morning Plum: What Sebelius’ resignation says about the Obamacare debate
Republicans are already salivating at the prospect of confirmation hearings for her successor, and their response to the resignation says a lot about the current state of the debate over Obamacare. In short, as enrollment continues to mount, Republicans are retreating to a fallback position, which is that Obamacare cannot work by definition.
Paul Krugman, NYT:
Health Care Nightmares
When it comes to health reform, Republicans suffer from delusions of disaster. They know, just know, that the Affordable Care Act is doomed to utter failure, so failure is what they see, never mind the facts on the ground…
And while supposed Obamacare horror stories keep on turning out to be false, it’s already quite easy to find examples of people who died because their states refused to expand Medicaid. According to one recent study, the death toll from Medicaid rejection is likely to run between 7,000 and 17,000 Americans each year.
But nobody expects to see a lot of prominent Republicans declaring that rejecting Medicaid expansion is wrong, that caring for Americans in need is more important than scoring political points against the Obama administration. As I said, there’s an extraordinary ugliness of spirit abroad in today’s America, which health reform has brought out into the open.
And that revelation, not reform itself — which is going pretty well — is the real Obamacare nightmare.
CNBC:
Why Sylvia Burwell? What Obama was thinking