President Barack Obama tried to reassure the American public on Thursday that his health care legislation “worked,” amid competition and cost issues in multiple states and skepticism from both sides of the aisle.
But he granted that more needed to be done to improve the system.
“Now, that doesn’t mean that it’s perfect; no law is,” Obama said in Miami, Florida. “And it’s true that a lot of the noise around the healthcare debate…has been nothing more than politics. But…it’s still just a first step. ”
The president asked Republicans to help take the next ones, inviting them to propose ideas beyond repealing and obstructing.
“And they’ve gotta pass basic muster,” he said of such plans. “You can’t say, ‘Well, if we just plant some magic beans, then everybody will have health insurance.’ No. We’ve got to have health care economists and experts look at it and see if the thing would actually work.”
But House speaker Paul Ryan introduced his party’s health care reform alternative in June, which fused several GOP priorities and was well-received by conservatives. “I think the House proposal brings together a lot of the best conservative thinking on health care developed over the past decade, and makes for a serious and fairly comprehensive alternative approach,” Yuval Levin of National Affairs said.
It’s clear that some change is in order, with Obama’s remarks coming at a crucial time for his signature legislation. As the law faces its final sign-up period under his watch, the Department of Health and Human Services aims to get 13.8 million people onto the exchanges by the end of 2017. But other analysts are less optimistic, claiming that enrollments may level off or even decrease during this time period.
Additionally, Obamacare faces many challenges nationwide. Although more people are now insured, insurers have dropped out in multiple states due to increasing costs, depriving consumers of choices. (Obama reiterated his remedy of a public option “fallback” for such individuals on Thursday.)
This has led to bipartisan criticism. Robert Moffit, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, wrote in the Daily Signal that Obamacare is “more like a patient suffering from multi-organ failure” due to its costly nature and weak enforcement of penalties. And on the Democratic side, former president Bill Clinton and Minnesota governor Mark Dayton have recently questioned its affordability.
President Obama, however, claimed that such problems could be resolved if everyone followed his proposal.
“All it requires is putting aside ideology and, in good faith, try to implement the law of the land,” the president went on to say. “If state leaders purposely try to make something not work, then it’s not going to run as smoothly as if they were going to try and make it work.
“We’re not going to go back.”
