SocialistMop.com Political Humor for the Liberty-Minded
President Obama gave a press conference today on the fumbled rollout of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, his signature health insurance reform bill. During the briefing, he acknowledged the disastrous launch of the Healthcare.gov website. He also outlined a plan to use “enforcement discretion,” an extralegal measure which would presumably allow Americans to keep those health insurance plans that have been canceled due to Obamacare regulations.
The press conference was an hour-long self-evisceration by the President, during which he made some interesting statements:
On fumbling
We fumbled the rollout on this health care law.
But I’m also somebody who, if I fumbled the ball, you know, I’m gonna wait until I get the next play and then I’m gonna try to run as hard as I can and do right by the team. So, ultimately, I’m the head of this team. We did fumble the ball on it. And what I’m going to do is make sure that we get it fixed.
The federal government does a lot of things really well. One of the things it does not do well is Information Technology procurement. This is kind of a systematic problem that we have across the board.
On surprises
What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.
On the website, I was not informed directly that the website would not be working the way it was supposed to.
Another mistake that we made, I think, was underestimating the difficulties of people purchasing insurance online.
On broken promises
I completely get how upsetting this can be for a lot of Americans, particularly after assurances they heard from me that if they had a plan that they liked, they could keep it.
With respect to the pledge I made that “If you like your plan, you can keep it,” I think, and I’ve said in interviews, that there is no doubt that the way I put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate.
The grandfather clause would work sufficiently for them, and it didn’t, and again, that’s on us, which is why we’re, that’s on me.
That proved not to be the case, and that’s on me. And, the American people, those who got cancellation notices, do deserve and have received an apology from me.
We fixed the glitch
The website will work much better on November 30th / December 1st than it worked certainly on October 1st. That’s a pretty low bar.
I think it is not possible for me to guarantee that a hundred percent of the people a hundred percent of the time going on this website will have a perfectly seamless, smooth experience.
We’re gonna have to continue to improve it, even after November 30th / December 1st.
What it’s not like
I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying this is gonna be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity, a week before the website opens, if I thought that it wasn’t gonna work.
Buying health insurance is never gonna be like buying a song on iTunes.
Here are highlights from the press conference:
