DC Trawler

Look out, wingnuts: Baghdad Kathy’s pushin’ back!

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Push ’em back, push ’em back, wayyyyyyyy back! Go Team Blue!

Just because Healthcare.gov is a complete shambles and Obamacare itself is a disaster looming over every single citizen of the United States, that doesn’t mean Kathleen Sebelius needs to put up with your lip.

Jason Millman, Politico:

Kathleen Sebelius pushes back against GOP critics

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius touted a vastly improved Obamacare enrollment website Wednesday morning as she sought to reassure skeptical lawmakers that people who want health insurance coverage starting Jan. 1 will have it…

At this point, “vastly improved” could mean anything. Is there any possible improvement to Healthcare.gov that would not be, by definition, vast?

Sebelius cited recent positive trends in enrollment, helped by a better functioning website — and she announced that she had ordered an internal review at HHS into how the launch was so badly botched and how the agency can better manage big IT projects and contractors in the future…

An internal review? Whew! What a relief. I wonder if the internal review will find that everybody did everything they were supposed to do, and this whole thing has been really tough on them, and they all deserve big raises? Let’s hope so!

Sebelius pushed back when pressed by Republican lawmakers who said 5.6 million people had received cancellation notices in the past few months. “I don’t know where that number comes from,” she said when Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) cited news reports of millions of people losing coverage.

“Insurers cancel plans each and every year,” she added. “They change plans, they change networks.”

Wait.

That’s pushing back? “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and it doesn’t matter anyway” is pushing back? So much so, it warranted a headline praising it as such?

Damn. Even Politico isn’t really trying anymore. Their despair would be a lot more fun if they weren’t inflicting it on the rest of America too.

Update: