One Private Meeting Between President, Sebelius in 3.5 Years Leading Up to Obamacare Launch

One Private Meeting Between President, Sebelius in 3.5 Years Leading Up to Obamacare Launch

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A stunning new study unveiled on Fox News' Hannity finds that President Barack Obama’s White House calendar records just one face-to-face meeting between Obama and his Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in the more than three-and-a-half years leading up to the disastrous Obamacare launch.

The startling statistic comes from a new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) analysis of Obama’s own official White House calendar, as well as the Politico presidential calendar, and raises new questions about Obama’s executive leadership and management throughout the implementation of his singular legislative achievement.

More alarming still, the president’s schedule lists 277 private meetings with 16 other Cabinet secretaries in the same time span from Obamacare’s March 23, 2010 signing to November 30, 2013. Why Obama would devote so little face time to the person tasked with implementing what he calls his “most important initiative” is presently unclear.

According to the GAI report, technically, the official White House calendar contains zero meetings with Sebelius, as it only reaches back to July 12, 2010. GAI researchers then used the Politico presidential calendar to assess listings between Obamacare’s signing (March 23, 2010) and the first date listed on the White House’s calendar (July 12, 2010). The study also analyzed the entirety of the Politico calendar from March 23, 2010 to November 30, 2013 and found a single mention of an April 21, 2010 joint meeting between Obama, then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and Sebelius.

In a November 14th press conference, Obama claimed he “was not informed directly that the website would not be working the way it was supposed to.”

GAI says it recorded listings as they were contained on the White House and Politico presidential calendars; other forms of communications, such as private emails or phone calls, are not able to be quantified.

The lack of in-person meetings between Sebelius and Obama may offer new insight into what the New York Times calls a “deeply dysfunctional relationship” between HHS and Obama’s White House chief of staff. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that White House officials are coming under "mounting pressure from Democrats and close allies to hold senior-level people accountable for the botched rollout of President Barack Obama's signature domestic achievement and to determine who should be fired."