Harkin says Sebelius doesn't deserve to be fired over healthcare 'debacle'

Although Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius has admitted the rollout of Obamacare enrollment has been a “debacle,” Sen. Tom Harkin defended her Thursday and said she should keep her job.

“I take issue with it being a disaster,” the Iowa Democrat who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee told reporters. “It is, certainly, a setback, a bump in the road.”

Harkin blamed the attention the problems are receiving on Republicans “who wanted to kill this program from the very beginning.”

Harkin also defended President Obama, who has been accused of lying when he said, “If you like your health care, you can keep it."

“I don't know if it was misleading so much as presumptive on his part,” Harkin said. “A lot of people had junk policies. As long as they were healthy, they were happy.”

Obama probably was thinking that if people with “junk policies” knew what they were paying for they wouldn't want to keep it, Harkin said. In many cases, if people looked at what was covered and not covered by their policies “they were paying to be uninsured.”

While the Obamacare enrollment has had what he called a “mechanical problem,” Harkin said health care reform – the Affordable Care Act – is more than the healthcare.gov Web site.

“One part of it is the Web site, but I think, again, a lot of people focused on that to say the whole law is bad,” he said. “I have every assurance they are fixing it.”

That's despite skipping a meeting Wednesday with at the White House between the president and Democratic senators to discuss health care.

“I was invited,” Harkin said, “but I had other duties to attend to.” He was working to ready the Employment Non-Discrimination Act for final passage. He called the bill a “historic step” in assuring every American's civil rights by outlawing workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.