The Hill‘s Alexander Bolton reports that Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, one of Obamacare’s co-authors, regrets passing the law:
“We had the power to do it in a way that would have simplified healthcare, made it more efficient and made it less costly and we didn’t do it,” Harkin told The Hill. “So I look back and say we should have either done it the correct way or not done anything at all.
“What we did is we muddle through and we got a system that is complex, convoluted, needs probably some corrections and still rewards the insurance companies extensively,” he added.
“What we did is we muddle through and we got a system that is complex, convoluted, needs probably some corrections and still rewards the insurance companies extensively,” he added.
Harkin tells The Hill that Democrats should have passed a single-payer system:
“We had the votes in ’09. We had a huge majority in the House, we had 60 votes in the Senate,” he said.
He believes Congress should have enacted “single-payer right from the get go or at least put a public option would have simplified a lot.”
“We had the votes to do that and we blew it,” he said.
He believes Congress should have enacted “single-payer right from the get go or at least put a public option would have simplified a lot.”
“We had the votes to do that and we blew it,” he said.
Harkin’s comments come just a week after New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the party’s top political strategist in Congress, said that “Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them” by focusing on health care reform. “When Democrats focused on health care, the average middle-class person thought ‘the Democrats are not paying enough attention to me,” Schumer said.
