But here’s something we did see highlighted in a revealing way: The administration’s credibility on health care issues has been badly damaged. And Sebelius, in particular, appears not to be trusted, even by some in her own party.
Republican questioning focused heavily on the millions of insurance plan cancellations that are happening all over the country right now—and the contrast with President Obama’s repeated promise that anyone who liked his or her health plan could keep that plan.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tx.) asked Sebelius whether she thought President Obama’s statement was true. “Well, we know that lying to Congress is a crime, but unfortunately lying to the American people is not. I’d just like to ask you a simple true-or-false question. Is that statement on the White House website true or is it false?”
Her response was to try to challenge the framing of the question: “Sir, I think the statement is that...” Cornyn didn’t wait to find out what she thought the statement in question was. He cut her off, asking again: “Is it true or is it false, Madame Secretary?”
She never directly answered the question, according to the AP account. Instead she said that “a vast majority” of people who currently have job-based insurance would be allowed to keep their plans, as would a majority of people who get individual coverage. Cornyn finished the exchange by asking the record to “note that you have refused to answer my question whether it’s true or false.”
It was clearly a question that Sebelius didn’t want to answer, at least not directly. Other Republican legislators pressed her on the point, but the closest she came to an actual response regarding how Obama’s multiple promises that individuals could keep health plans they liked was when she said “The president’s promise was written into the law from Day One, and that was the grandfather clause.”
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