As the secretary sat down to begin the segment, Stewart opened a laptop on his desk. “I’m going to attempt to download every movie ever made, and you’re going to try to sign up for Obamacare, and we’ll see which happens first.”
Sebelius admitted the website rollout “started a little rockier than we’d like,” but said the administration had been working to make improvements. “It’s better today than it was yesterday, and it will keep getting better.”
The sign-up websites were offline for part of the weekend as efforts were made to fix multiple glitches that caused delays for many who attempted to use the program in the first few days.
When asked how many individuals had signed up for insurance so far, Sebelius admitted, “I can’t tell you, because I don’t know … we will be giving monthly reports.” She added that hundreds of thousands of accounts had been created, which indicated to the administration that those consumers “are going to go shopping” for insurance as the next step.
The segment became more contentious as the Comedy Central host turned to the subject of the individual mandate, specifically the fact that while many businesses were given a one-year delay to comply with the law, individuals were not.
“If I’m an individual that doesn’t want this, it would be hard for me to look at a big business getting a waiver," Stewart said. "I would feel like you are favoring big business because they lobbied you … but you’re not allowing individuals that same courtesy.”
