Romney Slams Obama's 'Fundamental Dishonesty'
Sunday, 03 Nov 2013 05:36 PM
“That fundamental dishonesty has really -- has really put in peril the whole foundation of his second term,” Romney said. “I think it is rotting it away.”
What “has really undermined the president's credibility in the hearts of the American people is that he went out, as a centerpiece of his campaign and as a centerpiece of Obamacare over the last several years, saying time and time again that fundamental to his plan was the right people would have to keep their insurance plan, and he knew that was not the case....”
Romney added: "Had the president been truthful and told the American people that millions would lose their insurance and millions more would see their premiums skyrocket… there would have been such a hue and cry against it, (that) it would not have passed.”
During the presidential campaign and later, as Congress debated the Affordable Health Care Act, Obama repeatedly said that no one would be forced to give up their existing health coverage under the law.
As governor of Massachusetts, Romney signed into law a 2006 state program used as a model for the federal law, known as Obamacare. Massachusetts, Romney said, “teaches some important lessons some states are not going to want to follow.”
Health insurance is more expensive in Massachusetts than in any other state, Romney pointed out, adding that “Texas and Minnesota and Montana” are not necessarily going to want to adopt such a costly plan.
"First of all, the Massachusetts experience was a state-run plan," Romney explained. "The right way to deal with health care reform is not to have a one-size-fits-all plan that's imposed on all the states, but recognizing the differences between different states' populations, states should be able to craft their own plans to get all their citizens insured, and to make sure that preexisting conditions are covered.
"And there's some other differences," Romney said. "In Massachusetts, we phased in the requirements so that there was a slow rollout. That way you could test the systems as you went along to make sure there wouldn't be glitches.
"I think you're going to find, when it's all said and done, after all these states that are laboratories of democracy get their chance to try their own plans, that those who follow the path that we pursued will find it's the best path, and we'll end up with a nation that's taken a mandate approach."
Romney said Obama must work with Republicans if he's going to fix the mess that the Obamacare rollout has become.
"I think the only way he can rebuild credibility is to work with Republicans and Democrats and try and rebuild a foundation," Romney said. "We've got to have a president. We've got to have a president that can lead. And right now, he's not able to do so."
The White House quickly went on the defensive.
The Massachusetts plan did take time to get off the ground, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said, enrolling only 0.03 percent of the population in the first month.
“I can promise you that the first enrollment numbers, which were released later this month, are not going to be what we want them to be. There’s no question about that,” Pfeiffer said on ABC’s “This Week” program. “The website hasn’t worked the way we want it to work. But we take responsibility for that, take responsibility for the errors, take responsibility for fixing it.”Between 5 million and 7 million people will need to enter private health care exchanges for the system to work, said Ezekiel Emanuel, vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania and an architect of the Obama plan. Enrollment will accelerate as the March deadline approaches, just as it did in Massachusetts, he said.
“You would expect at this stage of the game, from everything we know about the exchanges, that not a lot of people would sign up,” Emanuel said on “Fox News Sunday.” “People will put off buying until the end.”
After appearances on the Hill last week, administration officials are set to testify again this week about what went wrong with the online health portal. The government’s health care website tells visitors that online applications aren’t available from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. ET daily “while we make improvements.”
Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which has overseen the building and startup of federal online health exchanges, is scheduled to appear before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Nov. 5.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is set to appear the next day before the Senate Finance Committee.
The flawed debut of the health website, with delays, outages and software errors, is tarnishing Obama’s signature legislative achievement and has complicated his second-term agenda as his approval ratings drop.
Forty-eight percent of Americans said the government is doing a “poor” job of implementing the health law, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found. The law itself is supported by about 47 percent of respondents who said it should be kept or expanded, compared with 37 percent who said they want it repealed.
“I think government is inherently inept, because they don’t work on a profit motive,” Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, said on the “This Week” program. “I would say that there are fundamental things government can do. But government shouldn’t take on new opportunities or new things to do when it’s not managing what it has now.”
Romney also tipped his hat to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a potential Republican candidate for president in 2016.
“Chris could easily become our nominee and save our party and help get this nation on the right track again,” Romney said. “They don’t come better than Chris Christie.”
Christie, who is favored to win re-election on Nov. 5, is “one of the very strongest lights of the Republican Party,” Romney said. Christie, Senator Marc Rubio, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Romney’s former running mate, all are electable, he said.
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