News dump: CMS official in charge of HealthCare.gov retiring

This is how you take your lumps in the Obama administration. Botch the roll-out of the president’s legacy law so badly that you end up with three million fewer insured people than when we started, and you get to retire, announce it over a holiday weekend, and grab that juicy pension for 41 years of mediocre-to-disastrous public service.

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The person tasked with overseeing the development of HealthCare.gov is retiring, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Monday.

The departure of Michelle Snyder, the chief operating officer at CMS who’s been in public service for 41 years, comes a few months after the bungled launch of the federal health care insurance website.

Uh huh:

CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner noted in an email that Snyder was set to leave CMS at the end of 2012 but stayed on at Tavenner’s request to help with “the challenges facing CMS in 2013.”

“While the agency is losing a key member of its leadership team, we should celebrate Michelle’s dedication to a mission that provides vital health care services to tens of millions of our fellow Americans through the Medicare and Medicaid programs,” Tavenner said.

Snyder is the second top CMS official to leave since the website’s rocky rollout. Tony Trenkle, who served as the agency’s chief information officer, retired in November.

Celebrate her. We should celebrate her work. Not politely overlook her career and move on. Not merely thank her for trying despite her massive failure. But celebrate. We should celebrate her. These people are warped.

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What is it she was in charge of again?

Her official biography says that Ms. Snyder was responsible for “standing up new programs and activities required by the Affordable Care Act.”…

A former agency official who had predicted Ms. Snyder’s departure said Monday: “She had to go. She was responsible for the implementation of Obamacare. She controlled all the resources to get it done. She was in charge of information technology. She controlled personnel and budget.”

But, but there are more than 1 million people enrolled in Obamacare. And, estimates of 5 million who lost their coverage in 2013 because of Obamacare. If we’re generous, we can at least say there are millions fewer Americans with insurance thanks to Obama’s brilliant plan to expand insurance. Heckuva job.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 22, 2024
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