Health chief Sebelius apologizes for botched website

• Calls for Kathleen Sebelius to quit HHS post have grown louder
• She says problems with HealthCare.gov are %27not acceptable%27
• Obama administration has vowed website will be fixed by Nov. 30

WASHINGTON — Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius apologized to Americans Wednesday for the dysfunctional website that has hamnpered the roll out of the new national health care law.

"You deserve better," Sebelius said in testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "I apologize. I'm accountable to you for fixing these problems."

As Republican calls for her resignation grow louder, Sebelius was subjected to sharp, partisan grilling from lawmakers who asked her about technology, website security, the law's mandate that people obtain insurance, and a host of other issues. The hearing grew testy at times and the look on Sebelius' face was often one of frustration.

"Hold me accountable for the debacle. I'm responsible," Sebelius said after a heated exchange with Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., about who was in charge of the website.

Asked for an accounting of federal dollars, Sebelius said the government so far has spent $118 million on the website and $56 million more on "IT support" for the site.

Sebelius' testimony came the day after Marilyn Tavenner, the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Obama administration official closest to the website's management, apologized for the botched rollout in testimony before a different House panel.

Sebelius also sought to place some of the blame on government contractors building the website who "have not met expectations." She told the committee that there was not adequate "end-to-end testing" of the website, saying there was about two weeks of testing.

HealthCare.gov has been shaky since its debut on Oct. 1, when open enrollment began under the Affordable Care Act. The law, which passed with no Republican support, was signed by President Obama with great fanfare in 2010 as a key to overhauling the nation's complex health care system and providing insurance to millions of people who are currently without such coverage.

Obama has stood by Sebelius, a former Kansas governor, and has embarked on his own campaign to tout the law's benefits and move away from the website debacle. The president spoke Wednesday afternoon in Boston, to illustrate the success of Massachusetts' health care law — the basis for the Affordable Care Act.

Jeffrey Zients, a former White House budget deputy, said the site will be fixed by Nov. 30. Sebelius said HHS has updated the website's technology with new code and help from experts inside and outside of government.

Sebelius said Wednesday that she feels confident about the Nov. 30 date, noting that the department's assessment is that it will take that long for HealthCare.gov to be "an optimally functional" website. She stressed that government officials, while believing the online portal was ready for its debut, had expecting some problems, but not of this magnitude.

"I was wrong," she said. "We were wrong."

While she testified Wednesday, the website featured the same message all day: "The system is down at the moment." Julie Bataille, spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. She said the site was down because of server problems at the site's host, Verizon.

Until HealthCare.gov gets a clean bill of health, congressional Republicans are sure to keep using the website as a focal point in their arguments that the law is an unwieldy and costly example of government intrusion. The Republican-led House of Representatives has tried 40 times to repeal the law, to no avail.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., rejected the Republican description of the hearing as being regular congressional "oversight," suggesting they were out to attack a law that will ultimately benefit millions. "I would urge my colleagues to quit hyperventilating," he said.

At times throughout the hearing, Republicans made reference to cancellation notices that some individuals have received about their insurance. Blackburn and others sought to tie those cancellations to Obama's promise during the legislative fight over health care that Americans with insurance would be able to keep such coverage under the law.

Sebelius argued that insurance companies often cancel policies and that those will be replaced with new and better policies available under the law.

Lawmakers also raised concerns about the security of the website. Reps. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., read from an internal government memo that Rogers said showed the site had not received enough testing for security issues and that it "exposed a level of uncertainty that can be deemed as a risk."

The memo recommended addressing those risks, conducting daily tests, monitoring of the site for security issues and a full security test within two to three months. Sebelius said all of those recommendations are being followed and that the site is secure.

Sebelius said they did not conduct more extensive testing because they did not have time. The contractors said they were ready to go ahead, she said, and no one had recommended to her a delay from the promised Oct. 1 launch.

While the administration says more than 700,000 people have created accounts to buy insurance on state and federal health exchanges since Oct. 1, Sebelius and other officials have not disclosed how many people have actually enrolled through the online network. That data should be available by mid-November, the secretary said.

Sebelius acknowledged in her testimony that the number of enrollees through the online exchange would probably "be a very small number of people" for the first month of its existence, especially given the website's problems. But she said that is to be expected, and noted that Massachusetts experienced similar enrollment issues when its law took effect in 2006.

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