Departing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius spoke out about the Healthcare website and it being a low point in her five-year stay with the White House, according to CNN.
Sebelius said the Obama administration's timeline for having ready the new health care law's online sign-up system "was just flat out wrong," CNN reported.
The departing health chief also said the two months when healthcare.gov was plagued with technical problems were "a pretty dismal time" and the low point of her five-year tenure, according to CNN.
Sebelius also defended the law's impact and said millions of Americans now have access to health care because of it, CNN reported.
"People have competitive choices and real information for the first time ever in this insurance market," said Sebelius, who last week announced her resignation, according to CNN. She did acknowledge the rocky rollout for the online sign-up system fraught with technical problems that left Americans frustrated.
HealthCare.gov was envisioned as the principal place for people to buy insurance under Obama's health care law, CNN reportd. In its first few weeks, the technical problems became an embarrassment for the administration and its allies.
"Well, I think there's no question - and I've said this many times - that the launch of the website was terribly flawed and terribly difficult," Sebelius said in the interview, according to CNN.
Sebelius said the Dec. 1 deadline to have the website repaired left her nervous, saying that "having failed once at the front of October, the first of December became a critical juncture," CNN reported.
Sebelius' resignation comes just a week after sign-ups for insurance coverage ended, enrolling 7.1 million people and exceeding initial expectations, according to CNN. Enrollment has since increased to 7.5 million as people were given extra time to complete applications.
The departing secretary said she decided after the 2012 presidential election that she wanted to leave the administration but decided to stay through the sign-up period, CNN reported. Sebelius said Obama did not try to convince her to stay through the end of his term.
"I thought it was fair to either commit till January of 2017 or leave with enough time that he would get a strong, competent leader," Sebelius said, according to CNN.
