Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that she has been taken off guard by the concerted and continuing opposition to “Obamacare” and that her office has been pushed into public relations mode to persuade states to join the exchange.
The White House by and large thought the Supreme Court’s favorable ruling would have squashed all debate, she said, as The Hill reported.
“The politics has been relentless and that continues,” she said in a Reuters report. “There was some hope that once the Supreme Court ruled in July, and then once an election occurred there would be a sense that, ’This is the law of the land, let’s get on board, let’s make this work.’”
But states are still battling — and that’s a surprise, she said. The agency has been watching states closely for their decisions on the Medicaid expansion and the Obamacare exchanges and has assumed a campaign mode to sell the program before it really takes root in October.
“We are doing a lot of very active one-on-one conversations with states around the country,” Mrs. Sebelius said in The Hill. “It’s a big lift.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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