On Tuesday, former HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius sat down with USA Today's Washington Bureau chief Susan Page to discuss the healthcare law, Jonathan Gruber and whether it all was worth it.
Here are five key quotes from the interview.
1. On whether she felt like a scapegoat about HealthCare.gov's launch:
"No. I think that I was a CEO of a big company with an important rollout and HealthCare.gov was something that had been promised to work smoothly, to work like you were buying an airline ticket using your app on your computer and instead it worked like buying an airline ticket on a fax machine."
2. On Americans' understanding of the payer landscape:
"I think one of the things that we have learned with the passage of the law, and certainly with open enrollment in 2014 and will continue into 2015, is a lot of Americans have no idea what insurance is about, and have no idea even if they have coverage what a deductible is, what a co-pay is, how to choose a network. Those are complicated terms. I think the financial literacy of a lot of people, particularly people who did not have insurance overage or whose employers choose their coverage and present it to them, is very low. And that has been a stunning revelation. It's not because anybody hid it from folks, it's that this is a complicated product."
3. On Jonathan Gruber's upcoming testimony on the healthcare law in front of the House:
"Clearly he is not a very articulate with the phrasing he uses. I have no idea what Dr. Gruber is going to say, but frankly I don't really think it's relevant in terms of his personal opinions of what happened. He was not an author of the bill himself. He didn't influence the members of Congress who wrote the legislation. I think he's making some headlines which is unfortunate because he's harming the very product that he helped to push forward."
4. On the opponents and adversaries of the law:
"Every sentence, every syllable, every misstep, every opportunity to have adversaries of this law say 'See, we told you,' is leaped upon. What I find very frustrating is there has never been a time when those saying individuals actually acknowledge the successes."
5. On lessons learned and whether it was worth it:
"The lesson is change is very hard, and I was probably a bit overly optimistic at how quickly people would switch gears and embrace the law. I was really a believer that once the Supreme Court decided, a lot of the fear would die down or once the president was reelected that would end the debate. None of that has happened. I still think that making big bold moves is what moves this country forward and this was an opportunity to do something long overdue. So was it worth the price? You bet."
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