Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, has stepped down after a five-year tenure, the New York Times reports. Her resignation comes on the heels of a rocky rollout of the Affordable Care Act that was marred by technical glitches.
President Barack Obama formally announced her resignation this morning and introduced Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the current director of the Office of Management and Budget, who he plans to nominate to succeed Sebelius.
Sebelius told President Barack Obama early in March that she planned to step down after open enrollment ended March 31, the Times notes.
Before coming to Washington, Sebelius served as the Democratic governor of Kansas and, prior to that, she was the state's insurance commissioner, the Wall Street Journal adds.
At HHS, the Washington Post notes, she oversaw the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other agencies. Once there, Obama noted that her first challenge was to grapple with a flu outbreak.
"If I could take something along with me," Sebelius says, according to the Times, it would be "all the animosity."