WASHINGTON: Barack Obama admitted yesterday he deserved to be “slapped around” over the chaotic debut of his health care law, and pledged to work hard to restore confidence in his reeling presidency.
Obama, with his approval rating tanking and fellow Democrats in open revolt, promised to fix website and coverage failures that have hampered the rollout of the new law and sparked an opening for gleeful Republicans.
The sports-mad president chose an American football metaphor to encapsulate his remorse.
“These are two fumbles on ... a big game, but the game’s not over,” Obama said, announcing a plan to make good on his discredited promise that Americans who liked their existing health care plans could keep them.
“Everybody is properly focused on us not doing a good job on the rollout. And that’s legitimate and I get it.
“There have been times where I thought we were, you know, slapped around a little bit unjustly. This one’s deserved, all right? It’s on us.”
But the president denied that he had known ahead of the website’s launch on October 1 that it would not work properly.
“Had I been informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, ‘Boy, this is going to be great,’” Obama said, though he warned that buying health care was a complicated business and was “never going to be like buying a song on iTunes.”
Obama’s apology came as his second term risks being consumed by controversy over the health care law, with Capitol Hill Democrats particularly showing signs of panic that plummeting public confidence in the president could hamper their own prospects in mid-term elections next year.
AFP
