A senior official with the Department of Health and Human Services expressed irritation with the White House’s uncoordinated approach to implementing the Affordable Care Act months before the ACA’s insurance exchange website launched in October, 2013. According to reporting by The Washington Examiner’s Susan Crabtree, the official warned his counterparts that they needed to have a “come to Jesus meeting” prior to what he believed would be a rocky roll-out.
The Examiner discovered this when they uncovered an email the exchange between Anton Gunn, then HHS’s director of external affairs, and Enroll America President Anne Filipic.
While criticism of the botched healthcare rollout has focused on Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her department’s failures, the email exchange dated May 1 between Gunn and Filipic reveals that HHS officials harbored deep frustrations about the White House’s own health care messaging and preparations in the middle of 2013, months before the troubled rollout.
“I think we need to have a Come to Jesus meeting with our friend over there,” Gunn wrote, referring to his counterparts in the White House in the May, 2013 email exchange. “I think they are in disarray. I don’t know who’s in charge on health care.”
Read the full report via The Washington Examiner
[Photo via AP ]
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