While the Obama administration trumpeted the fact that more than 6 million people have signed up for health insurance through Obamacare as evidence that many have embraced the law, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney actually claimed on Fox News yesterday that Americans are rejecting the law “in large numbers.”
Though the rollout of the Affordable Care Act was fraught with problems, the latest reports indicate that more than 6 million people who previously were uninsured have started out the new year with health insurance—over 2 million in the private health plans and 4 million in expanded Medicaid. Open enrollment ends on March 31, with many observers expecting the government to hit 7 million enrollees.
Since the healthcare.gov is now working smoothly despite early glitches, Obamacare critics are reaching back to months-old complaints to level at the healthcare plan. Such was the case with Romney, who focused his criticism on Obama’s broken promise that the health care reform law would not cause anyone to lose their existing insurance policies, an issue that was resolved months ago when the president said anyone who was dropped would be able to keep their substandard policy.
“It’s not just that the president tells people that they have to buy health insurance, it’s that he tells them what health insurance they have to buy,” Romney said on Fox yesterday. “The idea that the government knows better than the American people what kind of insurance they have to have makes no sense. That is something which I think the American people are rejecting in large numbers.”
“I don’t like the idea that the government tells people they have to have a gold-plated health insurance policy, if they want something that’s more specific to their needs,” Romney continued. “The idea that a 70-year-old has to have birth control provisions or that they have to have maternity coverage are kind of things that people ought to be able to select on their own, and this is at the heart of the president’s deception and dishonesty with regards to Obamacare.”
Though Romney has continued to attack the birth-control provision, while he was governor of Massachusetts, he didn’t try to undo a state law that similarly required church-affiliated employers to pay for birth control coverage.
