WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- A Democratic senator said the uproar over President Obama's healthcare reforms will be offset by newly insured Americans dodging financial disaster.
Sen. Kristine Gillibrand, D-N.Y., downplayed the technical bugs that have vexed the so-called Obamacare Web site and repeated Democratic predictions that the insurance policies available under the program would be worth the wait for families that currently don't have healthcare coverage.
"This is a fixable problem," Gillibrand said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. "Once they fix it, people will see, 'I have an opportunity to cover my family.'"
Gillibrand opined that President Obama should emphasize that many individual insurance policies being canceled due to Obamacare requirements were not really worth the discounted premiums. "He should have just been more specific, because the point is if you're offered by a terrible healthcare plan that, the minute you get sick, you're going to have to go into bankruptcy," she said. "Those plans should never be offered."
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- HealthCare.gov stable all week, speed and response times good
- 39 Democrats defect on healthcare vote, Obama meets insurance execs
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- Obama: Botched rollout, Americans' ire 'on me'
A former senior aide to Obama, David Plouffe, agreed that the benefits of healthcare insurance reform would rise to the surface once the Affordable Care Act was up and running and the Web site issue was yesterday's news.
"Hopefully, we won't have another bout of Washington dysfunction, which is one of the reasons I think people are upset," Plouffe told ABC. "It is not just healthcare. And if we pass a budget ... and the economy continues to strengthen, we could be a in a much different place three or four months from now."
Matthew Dowd, an ABC political analyst and former political strategist for President George W. Bush, was not so confident Obama could bounce back. "If you take a look at history when presidents in their second term drop this level on credibility, trust and approval, they never come back from that," Dowd said. "I think the president is in a difficult spot on all of his legislative initiatives going forward in the next three years."
