CMS Head Tavenner Resigns Unexpectedly
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Obamacare’s top official will step down at the end of February.
The top administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Marilyn Tavenner, has announced that she is stepping down effective at the end of February. Principal deputy administrator Andy Slavitt will serve as the acting administrator in her wake.
Tavenner, who was responsible for the rocky rollout of Healthcare.gov and been under fire since then, will be leaving CMS just two weeks after the end of the 2015 Obamacare open enrollment period.
“It is with sadness and mixed emotions that I write to tell you that February will be my last month serving as the Administrator for CMS,” Tavenner said in an email obtained by Federal News Radio. “I have great pride and joy knowing all we have accomplished together since I came on board five years ago in February of 2010.
“We had many additional challenges put before us to look at ways to improve quality, reduce costs, eliminate fraud, increase transparency, and provide access to millions more of our fellow Americans. With those changes came a whole new set of responsibilities and a spotlight that brightly shown on all of us as we managed the largest federal agency budget, strong opinions across the nation, and our ultimate mission of improving our country's healthcare system and saving lives.”
Tavenner’s resignation was accepted by Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Sylvia Burwell, who praised the outgoing CMS head for her work in implementing changes under Obamacare, according to The Huffington Post. “It goes without saying that Marilyn will be remembered for her leadership in opening the Health Insurance Marketplace. In so doing, she worked day and knight so that millions of Americans could finally obtain the security and peace of mind of quality health insurance at a price they could afford.
“It’s a measure of her tenacity and dedication that after the tough initial rollout of HealthCare.gov, she helped right the ship, bringing aboard a systems integrator and overseeing an overhaul of the website. She is a big part of the reason why, as of this past spring, roughly 10 million American had gained health coverage since last year – the largest increase in four decades.”
Tavenner faced embarrassment last fall, when she was called to testify before the House oversight committee alongside Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist who talked about the “stupidity” of American voters in regards to the ACA. During the hearing, both Tavenner and Gruber repeated a mantra of “inexcusable” in reference to various actions in the Obamacare saga.
And in November, Tavenner received flak for acknowledging that CMS had mistakenly inflated Obamacare enrollment by about 400,000 last summer as a result of an error by the agency that included people who had bought stand-alone dental plans on the health insurance exchanges.