Cokie Roberts to Robert Reich: Obamacare Backlash Not Done Yet

On ABC’s This Week, Democratic strategist and former Clinton operative Robert Reich repeated the talking point that “next year,” once Obamacare is working better, everyone will love it.

However, even ABC’s Cokie Roberts couldn’t let that claim pass without a reality check.

Keeping step with many Democrats, Reich theorized that the public will “stop complaining” because so many more people will be happily enrolled in Obamacare. He said those unhappy would find less and less force behind their complaints:

This talking point has been one of President Obama’s favorites. A few months ago, for instance, the President claimed that once Americans discover how the law works so well for them, Republicans will stop calling it “Obamacare” out of fear of giving Obama credit.

Obamacare is such a disaster that Democrats are locked into assuring us that we will love Obamacare; not now, but later.

This was a bit too much for Cokie Roberts who noted that it may take more than a year for the law’s goals to be reached. After all, next year millions more Americans will lose their health insurance when Obamacare forces hundreds of thousands of medium and large businesses to cancel health plans that don’t comply with the demands of Obama’s new law.

Segment transcript:

ROBERT REICH: I mean, the attacks on Obamacare, on the Affordable Care Act, have been absolutely relentless. It was a terrible mistake for him to say what he did, but after a while, you’ve got to look at the fact that we have one of the most important reforms of the health care system of the United States ever enacted.

JONATHAN KARL: Is it going to be seen that way a year from now?

ROBERT REICH: I think it is, because at the present rate of enrollment we’re going to have over 1 million people enrolled by January, and people are going to stop complaining.

COKIE ROBERTS: Unless a year from now, people start seeing their employers dropping their health insurance and then you’ll start to have a whole ‘nother wave of reaction against it.