• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

PNHP

  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Local Chapters
    • Student chapters
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
    • How do we pay for it?
    • History of Health Reform
    • Conservative Case for Single Payer
    • FAQs
    • Información en Español
  • Take Action
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Reports & Proposals
    • Physicians’ Proposal
    • Medicare Advantage Harms Report
    • Medicare Advantage Overpayments Report
    • Pharma Proposal
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
  • Member Resources
    • 2025 Annual Meeting
    • Member Interest Groups (MIGs)
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Slideshows
    • Newsletter
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Webinars
    • Host a Screening
    • Events Calendar
    • Join or renew your membership
  • Home
  • Contact PNHP
  • Join PNHP
  • Donate
  • PNHP Store

Articles of Interest

Jon Stewart Grills Kathleen Sebelius On Obamacare Issues, Makes Strong Case For Single-Payer

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

By Paige Lavender & Nick Wing
Huffington Post, October 8, 2013

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was grilled by Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” on Monday, where she appeared to address glitches that have plagued the Obamacare website in its first week since going online.

Stewart challenged Sebelius on why individuals aren’t able to delay Obamacare, even though businesses have been given option.

“If I’m if an individual I’m wondering — well, an individual who doesn’t want this because there are individuals clearly that want this — but if I’m an individual that doesn’t want it, it would be hard for me to look at big business getting a waiver and not having to do it and me having to because I would think, ‘geez, it looks like because I don’t have a lobbying group,'” Stewart said. “I would feel like you are favoring big business because they lobbied you to delay it because they didn’t want to do this year but you are not allowing individuals that same courtesy.”

“Why is it that individuals, though, couldn’t say they didn’t want to do it just for a year?” Stewart continued.

“Well they can. They pay a fine,” Sebelius said. “They pay a fine at the end of the year, but they don’t have to — they can say, ‘I don’t want to do it.’ The theory is they can’t pick and choose if they are hit by a bus or diagnosed with an illness.”

In the second interview segment, Stewart admitted that he had broader concerns about what many saw as “incompetence” in Obamacare’s implementation over the last week.

See part 1 of the segment above, and watch part 2 below (story continues below video):

When Sebelius again defended the importance of making sure more people have health insurance and aren’t relying on treatment at the emergency room, Stewart said he believed this goal would have been best achieved through a single-payer system.

“I don’t understand the idea of staying with a market-based solution for a problem where people can’t be smart consumers. There are too many externalities in health care that I honestly don’t understand, why businesses would jump at the chance to decouple health insurance from their responsibility, and why the government wouldn’t jump at the chance to create a single-payer that simplifies this whole gobbledegook and creates the program that I think America deserves,” Stewart said.

Sebelius said she understood Stewart’s point, but thought “the president did not want to dismantle the health care that 85 percent of the country have and start all over again.” She also noted that the Republican response to Obamacare suggested that they wouldn’t have been too excited about the idea of a single-payer system run by the federal government.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/08/kathleen-sebelius-jon-stewart_n_4063267.html]]>

Primary Sidebar

Recent Articles of Interest

  • Trump’s Big Bill Will Make It Harder for Doctors to Give Patients the Care They Need
  • Medicare and Medicaid at 60
  • When Doctors Suffer Too: The Hidden Crisis of Moral Injury in U.S. Healthcare
  • Betrayal, Burnout & Moral Injury: Doctors and the Financialization of Medicine
  • UnitedHealth Has 2,694 Subsidiaries and Affiliates. Is It Too Big to Manage?
  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Local Chapters
    • Student chapters
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
    • How do we pay for it?
    • History of Health Reform
    • Conservative Case for Single Payer
    • FAQs
    • Información en Español
  • Take Action
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Reports & Proposals
    • Physicians’ Proposal
    • Medicare Advantage Harms Report
    • Medicare Advantage Overpayments Report
    • Pharma Proposal
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
  • Member Resources
    • 2025 Annual Meeting
    • Member Interest Groups (MIGs)
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Slideshows
    • Newsletter
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Webinars
    • Host a Screening
    • Events Calendar
    • Join or renew your membership

Footer

  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Local Chapters
    • Student chapters
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
    • How do we pay for it?
    • History of Health Reform
    • Conservative Case for Single Payer
    • FAQs
    • Información en Español
  • Take Action
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Reports & Proposals
    • Physicians’ Proposal
    • Medicare Advantage Harms Report
    • Medicare Advantage Overpayments Report
    • Pharma Proposal
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
  • Member Resources
    • 2025 Annual Meeting
    • Member Interest Groups (MIGs)
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Slideshows
    • Newsletter
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Webinars
    • Host a Screening
    • Events Calendar
    • Join or renew your membership
©2025 PNHP