Google – AFP, 14 November 2013
 |
US
President Barack Obama speaks in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the
White
House on November 14, 2013 in Washington, DC (AFP, Mandel Ngan)
|
Washington
— Barack Obama admitted Thursday he deserved to be "slapped around"
over the chaotic debut of his health care law, and pledged to work hard to
restore confidence in his reeling presidency.
Obama, with
his approval rating tanking and fellow Democrats in open revolt, promised to
fix website and coverage failures that have hampered the rollout of the new law
and sparked an opening for gleeful Republicans.
The
sports-mad president chose an American football metaphor to encapsulate his
remorse.
"These
are two fumbles on ... a big game, but the game's not over," Obama said,
announcing a plan to make good on his discredited promise that Americans who
liked their existing health care plans could keep them.
"Everybody
is properly focused on us not doing a good job on the rollout. And that's
legitimate and I get it.
"There
have been times where I thought we were, you know, slapped around a little bit
unjustly. This one's deserved, all right? It's on us."
But the
president denied that he had known ahead of the website's launch on October 1
that it would not work properly.
"Had I
been informed, I wouldn't be going out saying, 'Boy, this is going to be
great,'" Obama said, though he warned that buying health care was a
complicated business and was "never going to be like buying a song on
iTunes."
Obama's
apology came as his second term risks being consumed by controversy over the
health care law, with Capitol Hill Democrats particularly showing signs of
panic that plummeting public confidence in the president could hamper their own
prospects in mid-term elections next year.
In a
Quinnipiac University poll this week, the president's approval rating plunged
to a lowest ever 39 percent and surveys show his previously solid ratings on
character and trust eroding.
Republicans,
who en masse opposed Obamacare, immediately warned that his contrition did not
go far enough.
"President
Obama needs to admit that Obamacare cannot be fixed," said Eric Cantor,
the Republican House Majority leader.
"Pointing
fingers and claiming ignorance is not leadership. For four years, the President
told the American people they could keep the plans they liked and costs would
go down, and even he now acknowledges that was simply not true."
 |
Nayie Villa (L) speaks with Rudy Figueroa an insurance agent with Sunshine
Life and Health Advisors as she looks to purchase an insurance policy under the
Affordable Care Act at a kiosk setup at a mall on November 5, 2013 in Miami,
Florida (Getty Images/AFP/File, Joe Raedle)
|
Mitch
McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, insisted the only remedy was to
dismantle the president's proudest domestic achievement.
"What
makes this admission even worse is the fact that it was prompted not by the
heartbreaking stories of millions of Americans, but by the private pleadings of
a handful of endangered Democrats," McConnell said.
"Americans
are becoming increasingly aware of the fact Obamacare is broken beyond
repair."
The
president's current political woes stem partly from his repeated assurance that
those with health care plans could keep them when Obamacare comes into force.
But that
turned out not to be true as hundreds of thousands of Americans received
notices from their health insurance companies that their policies would be
cancelled as they did not satisfy the higher quality requirements of the new
law.
Obama
announced Thursday that policy cancellations would be postponed for a year
while Obamacare's problems are fixed.
"The
American people -- those who got cancellation notices deserve and have received
-- an apology from me," Obama said.
While
admitting that the online marketplace for consumers to find new health plans
had a "rough start," Obama warned his political opponents not to try
to overturn the entire law.
"I
will not accept proposals that are just another brazen attempt to undermine or
repeal the overall law and drag us back into a broken system," he said.
Figures
released Wednesday showed only 106,185 people have been able to register for
the program, 1.5 percent of the number the administration had planned to
recruit by the end March next year.
Obama's
plans did little to placate his foes or allies.
Democratic
Senator Jeanne Shaheen called for a two-year transition period.
Republican
Senator John Hoeven complained: "Obama's fix is "like closing the
barn door after the horse has bolted."
"I
just don't think it's going to work, it's not enough. We really need to... get
rid of Obamacare and start over."
Related Articles:
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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