Over 40 times the Republicans in the House voted to defund the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and they went as far as to shut down the Federal government over it. It hurt the Republicans in the polls, and we’ll see how much it hurt the party in 2014.
I know I’ve written this a few times before, but the Affordable Care Act bill passed the Senate in December 2009 by a vote of 60-39. In March 2010 the House passed the bill 219-212. The President signed the bill. Republican Mitt Romney ran his presidential campaign base partly on the fact that he would repeal Obamacare. Romney lost. Obamacare was challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court and upheld.
Is Obamacare perfect? Heck no. It can be improved. Republicans and Democrats should work together to make it better. The President has signaled his desire to work with anyone to make the Affordable Care Act better. Some have said that a few people are losing their healthcare because of Obamacare, and, if that’s true, that would be a great place to start making improvements.
In what can only be termed as an “epic fail,” the Obama Administration rolled out their Affordable Care Act website with much fanfare and it crashed. It was like a rocket rising a few feet off the launch pad and exploding type of bad.
I think the reason the website failed was because so many folks in the media and from the right wing were accessing the site just to look for errors. It was either that or former President George W. Bush’s fault.
I am joking in those last two sentences.
But the epic failure of the Healthcare.gov website is not a reason to delay it or do away with it or do anything but work to make it better. There’s plenty of time to fix the website, we’re just a few weeks into the six-month enrollment period. People can sign up over the phone, too. Also, there are organizations that can help. I went to LocalHelp.HealthCare.gov and typed in my zip code. There were 13 places listed as “Application Assisters” for my area where I can get help.
We’ve been hearing a lot of naysayers from the right – like right-wing radio and television criticize Obamacare. The Obama administration does deserve some grief for the failure of the website.
Overall, I would imagine the people complaining the loudest about Obamacare on talk radio and television are those who already have health insurance – about 80% already have it.
Healthcare.gov has had over 20 million visitors and “Nearly 500,000 Americans have already applied for health coverage.” That is a good thing.
####
