A top federal administrator central to the rollout of Obamacare announced Friday she is stepping down.
Marilyn B. Tavenner is the head of Medicare and Medicaid, and played a central role in the extremely rocky rollout of the online insurance exchanges in 2013. She did not indicate she planned to step down, but Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has accepted her resignation, reported The New York Times.
Tavenner testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in December to answer for reporting false enrollment numbers in a September hearing before the committee. She had reported 7.3 million people enrolled in Obamacare nationwide, but the Oversight committee found in November that number was inflated.
She brushed off the false numbers, and declined to answer many of the committee’s questions, saying she didn’t know how many Americans were uninsured before Obamacare began, the number of customers whose insurance premiums went up after the first year or the number of sign-ups in that year’s enrollment period. (RELATED: Obamacare Chief Stays Mum)
Burwell praised Tavenner’s work in a statement about her resignation. “Marilyn will be remembered for her leadership in opening the health insurance marketplace,” Burwell said, according to The New York Times. “It’s a measure of her tenacity and dedication that after the tough initial rollout of HealthCare.gov, she helped right the ship.”
Tavenner will be replaced by Andrew M Slavitt, a top official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Slavitt began work last year after working for Optum, a large insurance company that helped build the federal insurance exchange.
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