Google – AFP, Stephen Collinson (AFP), 21 October 2013
 |
US
President Barack Obama speaks about the Affordable Care Act in the Rose
Garden
of the White House in Washington, DC, October 21, 2013 (AFP, Saul Loeb)
|
Washington
— President Barack Obama said Monday there was "no sugarcoating" the
problems clouding the online launch of his health care law, but mounted a firm
defense of a system that will help define his legacy.
Obama
struggled to assert control over a mounting political storm over the rollout of
Obamacare websites, which gleeful Republicans are using to argue the system is
fatally flawed and will never work.
"There's
no sugarcoating it. The website has been too slow, people are getting stuck
during the application process," Obama said in a speech in the White House
Rose Garden.
"I
think it's fair to say that nobody is more frustrated by that than I am."
Obama spent
much of his first-term political capital on a system which is the closest
America has ever come to universal health care.
And he was
adamant that many people are getting insurance for the first time in years and
that Obamacare functions well as a whole.
"Let
me remind everybody that the Affordable Care Act is not just a website,"
Obama said.
"It's
much more.
"The
point is, the essence of the law, the health insurance that's available to
people, is working just fine.
"In
some cases, actually, it's exceeding expectations," he said, describing
malfunctions and delays on the Healthcare.gov website as "kinks."
Obama
promised that his administration was doing everything it could to fix website
glitches, and had called on some of the country's best computing experts to fix
it in a tech "surge."
"Precisely
because the product is good. I want the cash registers to work. I want the
checkout lines to be smooth," he said.
The
president read out a free phone line number for people to register with the
site, and argued that the website had been visited 20 million times already.
The White
House however refused to give out figures on the number of people who have
completed the registration process and bought health care plans in the newly
established insurance market places, designed to increase the risk pool of
people seeking insurance.
Republicans
have pounced on the problems with Obamacare's rollout, arguing that it is a
disastrous sign of what happens when the government gets involved in the
private insurance market.
While the
White House highlights cases of people who have been able to buy insurance for
the first time and popular aspects of the law, Obama's foes offer stories of
those who have seen existing plans cancelled in the disruption in the health
care market caused by Obamacare.
 |
US Senator
Ted Cruz speaks to reporters
on Capitol Hill October 16, 2013 in
Washington, DC
(AFP/File, Brendan
Smialowski)
|
"It
should be defunded and repealed," Cruz said in a statement.
House of
Representatives Republican leader Eric Cantor said that Obamacare's problems
were larger than a malfunctioning website and would take more than a "tech
surge" to fix.
"The
website does serve as stark evidence that the federal government is
ill-equipped to centrally manage our nation's health care," Cantor said.
The
program, which opened for business on October 1, aims to provide access to
medical care for millions of Americans who often are priced out of other health
care options.
The federal
website serves 36 states, with the 14 other US states managing the system
locally with their own websites.
But the
websites have struggled with overloads, glitches and crashes, in a big
embarrassment for the program and for the president.
Opposition to President Obama and the Transition to Uncorrupted Governments
Related Articles:
Opposition to President Obama and the Transition to Uncorrupted Governments
goldenageofgaia.com, Steve Beckow, An Hour with an Angel, September 30, 2013, with Archangel Michael
... SB: Oh! Very good! Okay. I think I recall you mentioning Medicare in Canada. Canada has a wonderful system of universal medicare. When will the United States enjoy the same quality of medicare? Or other nations, for that matter.
AAM: You see, this is one of the fundamental rights, and your United Nations has just begun to peek at this. All of your — yes, all — of your medical systems have been based on false grids that you are eligible for disease. Many, many industries have grown up around this belief system.
Now, we would not dismantle this in a day, because the displacement would be very large, but you have already begun to see the shift to wellness, to healing centers, to alternative methods of energy healing. And with the arrival of your star brothers and sisters this will become even more so.
So not only universal medical care, but universal healthcare and the right to wellness is going to become the simple stand-alone fact over the next year to two years. Oh, and it will happen much more quickly in the United States.
SB: Oh, that’s good to hear. So many people are bankrupted by a sudden illness. And it never should be that way.
AAM: It is an atrocity that one may suffer and die because one does not have adequate money. That is absurd. ....
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