Kansas senator: HHS chief Sebelius should resign

Catalina Camia | USA TODAY

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., says it's time for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to resign for "gross incompetence" over the rocky start to a centerpiece of President Obama's health care law.

It's not unusual for a GOP senator to call on a member of a Democratic Cabinet to resign, or vice versa. But when the senator and the Cabinet secretary hail from the same state, their families have long been friends, and the senator supported the secretary's confirmation, that's noteworthy.

Sebelius and the Obama administration are taking a lot of blows over the new online health insurance exchanges that launched Oct. 1. Roberts has long been a critic of the health care law, and the computer glitches that have marred the rollout of the online exchanges are his last straw.

"Everything we warned about has come to pass," Roberts said in a statement that was especially critical of Sebelius' much-mocked appearance on The Daily Showwith Jon Stewart. "They can see Obamacare has failed them. We need a secretary who can admit when enough is enough."

Sebelius, a former governor of Kansas, defended the administration's launch of the health insurance exchanges. People have complained about long delays to sign up or not being able to do so at all because the Healthcare.gov website crashes. "Nobody wants Americans to have to wait to sign up," she wrote in an op-ed column for USA TODAY. "Engineers are working day and night to make upgrades. We're adding more servers to enable the system to handle larger loads. And we're upgrading our software as well to make the system more efficient and enable it to handle higher volumes."

Roberts said at Sebelius' confirmation hearing in 2009 that they enjoyed a "special relationship." He was a congressional aide to Keith Sebelius, the secretary's father-in-law, and considers him his "godfather" in politics.

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