The U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary has accepted the resignation of Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who was in charge of the disastrous rollout of an online insurance exchange.

Tavenner said in an email announcement that she would step down as CMS administrator after February.

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She joined the Obama administration in February 2010, a couple of weeks before the president signed the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.

In May 2013, the Senate confirmed her CMS administrator. She was a top Medicare official, an insurance agency that covers one in three Americans, with a yearly budget of a little over $800 billion.

U.S. Health Secretary Sylvia Burwell said Tavenner will be remembered leading the opening the health insurance marketplace, adding that after the difficult rollout of HealthCare.gov, she helped fix the service. The marketplace, which is a key benefit of Obamacare, was bogged down for several weeks after it went into operation in late 2013. The website allows people to look for health insurance deals.

With the intense politics surrounding health care, Obama may find it tough to find a new Medicare administrator, whom the Republican-dominated Senate can confirm. Medicare operated without a Senate-confirmed chief for almost seven years before Tavenner gained approval two years ago.

The Republican Senate majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, thanked Tavenner for her service, but he added that a law as complicated as Obamacare is too unwieldy to manage. He said the next administrator should solely focus on Medicaid and Medicare.

A nurse, Tavenner served for more than two decades at a large medical chain, the Hospital Corporation of America. She was the health and human resources secretary of Virginia from 2006 to 2010, supervising Medicaid and other services. 

TagsMarilyn Tavenner, Obamacare, medicare, Medicaid