Obama defends Affordable Care in Dallas

buzzz worthy. . .

One month after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (AFA), President Obama is facing opposition to Obamacare following its botched online rollout heads on.  On Wednesday, he went to the state of Texas where opposition to his signature health care legislation is strongest.  Speaking from Dallas, while the president expressed regrets about the technical problems that prevented millions of Americans for enrolling online, he defended the merits of AFA.  He said people are working tirelessly to the kinks out of the system by the end of November.

Below is an excerpt from the speech:

"Now, I’m the first to say that the first month I’ve not been happy with.  (Laughter.)  You’ve all heard about the website woes.  Nothing drives me more crazy than the fact that right now, there’s great insurance to be had out there, choice and competition, where people can save money for a better product -- except too many folks haven’t been able to get through the website. 

Now, this is like having a really good product in a store, and the cash registers don’t work and there aren’t enough parking spots and nobody can get through the door.  And so we are working overtime to get this fixed.  And the website is already better than it was at the beginning of October, and by the end of this month, we anticipate that it is going to be working the way it is supposed to, all right?  And folks are working 24/7 to make sure that happens.

But remember, the insurance is already there.  And if people can't get through the website, they can get on the phone to the call center and people can take their application and walk them through this process, and people can apply in person if they've got committed folks who are out there helping people to sign up. And that’s what all of you have been committed to doing. 

And it is so important, because the truth of the matter is, even if the website were working 100 percent, a lot of people would still need help to navigate through this stuff.  A high percentage of people who don’t have health care also might not have ready access to a computer right away, or it might be confusing for them and they would need people to help guide them through this process.  And that’s true, by the way, if they were buying any kind of insurance.  Sometimes it's a complicated process.

So the commitment that all of you -- that congregations, that faith-based groups -- are engaged in is critically important.  And it's not going to stop; even after the website is running perfectly, we're still going to need all of you to be making these efforts.  And I want to make special mention of the Mayor's and Clay's work, and Eddie Bernice's work to get people signed up, because that’s the kind of commitment that we're going to need on the ground on a day-to-day basis. "