Getting four Pinocchios from The Washington Post for the “if you like your health plan…” comment didn’t do it. Getting another three Pinocchios from the Post for blaming health insurance companies for people losing their health coverage didn’t do it. But finally, hearing an earful from 16 panicked Democratic senators apparently got through to the president, convincing him that he needed to come clean because their constituents are so outraged over ObamaCare’s failings.
The Post said that the president’s “if you like your health plan” promises “were sweeping and unequivocal – and made both before and after the bill became law.”
But even with that, President Obama couldn’t quite go all the way with a real apology. When he finally spoke to NBC’s Chuck Todd, this is the best he could tell the millions of people who have lost their health insurance as a direct result of his signature health law: “I am sorry that they, you know, are finding themselves in this situation, based on assurances they got from me.” Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute calls it a “kind-of-sort-of” apology.
Amazingly, the president now says that he if just had time and knew how to write code, he would fix the website himself. This shows an astonishing lack of understanding of: 1) the magnitude of the problem with the dysfunctional website and the huge administrative infrastructure required to re-engineer one-sixth of the largest economy on earth, and 2) the real harm that this law is doing to people who are desperate because they have lost insurance coverage that is paying for serious medical illnesses and they can’t find new policies.
And what solution is he offering? Still working on it.