This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, April 16, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Kathleen Sebelius is out as Secretary of Health and Human Services after overseeing vast and dubious expansions of that

office is power, but her replacement will wield even more power over the health care sector.

Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, offers his thoughts.

Well, Kathleen Sebelius oversaw maybe the broadest expansion of the powers of the Secretary of Health and Human Services

since the creation of that position in the 1970s.

And part of that was done by Congress, but part of it was done by Sebelius herself.

A lot of people have referred to Obamacare not as a bill but as a shell of a bill because it gives

so much power to the Department of Health and Human, the Secretary of Health and Human Services

to fill in all the blanks.

And so instead of specifying every type of coverage that people have to purchase in order to comply with

Obamacare's individual mandate, they left that power to Kathleen Sebelius.

And that's how we got the contraception mandate that has just been argued before the

Supreme Court is violating religious liberty. And it's one of the ways that she

really took the power the Congress gave her, expanded it, but then she's expanded it in other ways,

ways that violate, clearly violate the Constitution.

When insurance companies began complaining that, well not even complaining, just informing their enrollees about how Obamacare was increasing their premiums back in September of 2010, six months after the bill was passed,

Kathleen Sebelius basically threatened them with bankruptcy if they

kept informing their customers about how Obamacare was facing their premiums.

Polita fact, true to form four or so years after the case,

said that Kathleen Sebelius was creating a culture of intimidation.

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