I had to sign the paper to shut down the government. It's terrible.... [But] what the shutdown showed many, many people is the importance of the role of government. And as frustrated [as people get with] Washington, there are so many things [the government does] that are so important to people's lives every day. The panda cam, paying small businesses their loans - these are all things that shut down.

Certainly there was the Affordable Care Act part, then unaccompanied children [there has been a surge of children entering the country illegally and without parents, particularly in Texas], and things like, we find smallpox in an NIH lab, after 50 years? Why didn't you find it, like, five weeks ago or three years ago? There was thing after thing. But the big ones were [dealing with] the Ebola [outbreak], the unaccompanied children. [It was] perhaps a bigger challenge than I had calculated on my yellow pad as I was thinking about this role.

We know there are states, like Alaska, where there are not a lot of providers. How do we work on issues like that? How do we work on making sure that the small-business part of this works better?... And if people have [alternate] plans, let's compare them and see. Access, affordability, and quality - that's what this is about. [But] "repeal" is a symbol of something that I don't think is connected to the substance of what's happening. Do you want to take away care from people who have preexisting conditions? [Repeal] takes you backward.

Day after day, ordinary people become heroes through extraordinary and selfless actions to help their neighbors.

I have been fortunate to work in places where people have a passion for their work. At HHS the passion sort of exceeds passion - it's a vocation.... I obviously knew that there were certainly some challenges that I would be taking on both with the work and the politics. [But] I probably did not have the right expectation level with regard to the number and volume of crises that would occur.

First of all, women inherently, I think, are quite capable of having lots of balls in the air. And so, like, it's all those skills you use; you analyze the problem, figure out your tools, and then go at it piece by piece.... It's like what you have to do in the morning to get your kids out the door [if you're a parent]. The skills are, I believe, the same. The patience issues are the same.

So we want to make it easier to shop and understand products because many people aren't educated about what's offered - do you know your premiums? Do you know your copays? Do you know your deductibles? And so figuring out ways that we help people understand what this is, how it works, and that they can shop to get what they need.