A day after the deadline to enroll in Obamacare for 2014, President Barack Obama claimed that 7.1 million Americans have enrolled in Obamacare and the law was working so well that “there’s no good reason to go back.”
Speaking at the White House on Tuesday next to Vice President Joe Biden, Obama made no mention of how many Americans actually paid their premiums. By conservative estimates, at least 20% of those who have enrolled have not made a payment, which means they do not have insurance. As Breitbart News has reported, Obamacare has enrolled “just 1.7% of America’s 48.6 million uninsured” even though the law promised “universal coverage.”
Obama then wondered why critics of Obamacare, who have lost their insurance and/or seen their premiums skyrocket, were so upset. Obama, who has granted waiver after waiver to key provisions of his own law, dismissed many of Obamacare’s “horror stories” as just “tall tales” meant to “scare” people and “undermine the law.”
“There’s no good reason to go back,” Obama declared, even though Obamacare remains deeply unpopular and is primarily responsible for plummeting his approval ratings to record-low numbers.
He said Obamacare was “doing what it’s supposed to do” and claimed that it provides “greater security to Americans who have coverage,” even though millions of Americans have lost their insurance plans, and this despite Obama’s infamous false promise to them that they would be able to keep their insurance plans and doctors.
Obama said that Obamacare represented “progress” and history doesn’t remember those who stand in the way of such fundamental transformation.
“Change is hard,” he said. “Fixing what’s broken is hard.”
He claimed that premiums are rising more slowly than they ever have the last 50 years, and he even said that more Americans are not covered because Republican governors have not expanded coverage under the law.
“I don’t get it,” Obama said. “Why are they so mad about the idea of folks having health insurance?”
Obama has used March Madness, one of the country’s most popular sporting events, to promote Obamacare, and convinced athletes like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James to help him sell it. Celebrities and athletes have blanketed the airwaves pitching the law. Just yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden went on Rachel Ray’s show and sold Obamacare as host Rachel Ray was moved to tears. Yet Obama claimed the White House didn’t feverishly attempt to get more enrollees and implied Americans enrolled because the product was good instead of being mandated to enroll by their government.
“We didn’t make a hard sell,” Obama farcically claimed. “We didn’t have billions of dollars of commercials like some critics did.”
Despite all of the evidence that prompted the White House to even extend the enrollment deadline on the “honor system” in addition to the previous waivers that were granted to small businesses, labor unions, and those in Congress, Obama still said the country was making progress under Obamacare even as millions of Americans have been put in a perpetual state of flux under a law that seems to change at whim.
“The Affordable Care Act is here to stay,” he said. “As messy as it’s been sometimes, as contentious as it’s been sometimes, it is progress.”
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