Obama says 'main priority' on health law is improving web site

Politico: Pre-Super Bowl, Obama Sparks With Bill O'Reilly
President Barack Obama faced questions Sunday on Obamacare, Benghazi and the IRS's targeting of conservative groups during a pre-Super Bowl interview with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and dismissed much of the criticism of him as ginned up by the cable news channel. ... Asked if the "biggest mistake" of his presidency was his claim that Americans who liked their health insurance plans would be able to keep that coverage, Obama nudged his interviewer. "Oh, Bill, you've got a long list of problems of my presidency," he said (Epstein, 2/2).

CBSNews: Obama Defends Decisions On Sebelius, Benghazi, IRS In Fox Interview
Asked why he did not fire Sebelius for the botched roll out of HealthCare.gov, Mr. Obama said, "We hold everybody up and down the line accountable but when we're midstream, Bill, we want to make sure that our main focus is how do we make this thing work so people are able to sign up." He said his "main priority" on the health care law is improving the website so people can sign up for health insurance. As for when he knew that the site would be unable to handle traffic when it was launched, the president said "we all anticipated that there would be some glitches," but that, "I don't think I anticipated or anybody anticipated the degree of the problems with the website" (Kaplan, 2/2).

The Associated Press: Obama Defends Himself From Array Of GOP Criticism
Obama would not say why he didn't fire Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius after the failed launch of the government's online marketplace. He also declined to say that the biggest mistake of his presidency was telling Americans if they liked their health care they could keep it and argued the website is now working the way it's supposed to (2/2).


http://www.kaiserhealthnews.orgThis article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

 

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