Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius should be fired over the glitch-ridden Obamacare launch, real-estate mogul Donald Trump told "Fox & Friends."
"Sebelius is in charge. I've always liked her as a person. She has a wonderful style, a wonderful everything. But you have to get fired," Trump said.
The Healthcare.gov website, where people shop for insurance plans and pick their coverage through the Affordable Care Act, has been plagued by technical difficulties since its launch Oct. 1. Building a website should have been easy, Trump said Monday.
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"Terrible rollout. If this is a sign of things to come with respect to Obamacare, this was the easy part," he said.
Trump maintained he was a "believer in healthcare," but that the Obamacare rollout has been a "total disaster."
"It really is a shame what's going on with this whole Obamacare situation. It's a total disaster. I really believe the website is just the beginning," he said.
Ultimately, Trump said, he thought the new healthcare law would collapse on its own, due to its complexity.
"I have a theory that Obamacare is going to fall of its own weight. It's so complicated and so bad in so many ways. People aren't getting what they want," he said.
Lawmakers also are
calling for Sebelius to answer concerns about the management of Obamacare.
Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, told "Fox & Friends" Monday he "absolutely" thinks Sebelius should be fired. At the least, she should testify before Congress, he maintained.
"She has to come before the American people, and help the American people understand what happened here. This is an absolute disaster," he said.
Michael Leavitt, HHS Secretary under President George W. Bush, agreed Sebelius should come forward and answer questions before Congress. Leavitt also is a former Republican governor of Utah.
"The secretary has to be the leader. In my view, the most important thing she could be doing right now is to say, 'We have problems. We're going to find them. We're going to fix them. And we're going to finish them,'" Leavitt said Monday on "Fox & Friends."
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Rep. Tim Murphy, a Pennsylvania Republican, also urged the HHS secretary to testify, rather than attend an event in Boston. Sebelius said she would be unable to testify due to
the scheduling conflict.
"I believe she should cancel her plans and testify before Congress. This is the biggest thing of her career and the signature piece of this president.
"She should be answering questions in terms of what went wrong, and what she plans to do to fix it," Murphy told Fox News "America's Newsroom" Monday.
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