Pelosi says party won’t abandon Obamacare

Nancy Pelosi talks to the media on Obamacare following a Caucus meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Reuters/Washington

The top Democrat in the US House of Representatives said yesterday that her party would not abandon President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare reform law, despite unrelenting Republican opposition and emerging signs of market turmoil for consumers and health insurers.

Two days after 39 House Democrats joined Republicans on a bill aimed at undermining the law known as Obamacare, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi denied that Democrats have lost confidence in Obama’s ability to overcome a botched rollout of his signature domestic policy achievement.

“There’s a lot of whoop-de-do and ado about what’s happening,” Pelosi told NBC’s Meet the Press programme.

“It doesn’t mean: Oh, it’s a political issue, so we’re going to run away from it. No. It’s too valuable for the American people,” she said, claiming similar numbers of Democratic lawmakers have joined Republicans on votes that challenged Obamacare in the past.

“Democrats stand tall in support of the Affordable Care Act,” Pelosi said.

Her comments come at a time of intensifying concern for Democrats, who face a tough midterm election fight or control of Congress in 2014.

Democrats have been hit by a public backlash over millions of people who have had their policies cancelled because the plans do not meet new consumer protections mandated by the law. The administration’s troubled enrollment Website, HealthCare.gov, also is still not working properly, more than six weeks after its launch.

Friday’s Democratic support for a House Republican bill that would allow insurers to continue selling older policies could be a sign that the administration’s coalition in Congress could be fraying, according to analysts. Several Democrats have already produced similar legislation.

Pressure from his Democratic Party prompted Obama to say last week that insurers could extend their existing policies for a year even if they don’t complying with the law.

But that decision stirred objections from insurers and some state insurance regulators about higher costs for consumers and potential solvency threats for insurance companies.

“What I really want to focus on is how do we address these reasonable problems. We have an interest in doing so, so ... the markets don’t blow up,” Karen Ignagni, president and chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade group, told the Fox News Sunday programme.

She appeared with Ben Nelson, chief executive of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which represents state regulators. He said states are worried that insurers could get saddled with unexpected losses as a result of the so-called Obamacare fix that extends non-compliant policies for a year.

“They want to make certain that this doesn’t shift the cost to the point that insurers face and risk insolvency,” he said.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act mandates that most Americans be enrolled in health coverage by March 31 or face a penalty. But the administration has made only partial progress fixing technical glitches that have made HealthCare.gov inaccessible to consumers in the 36 states it serves as it approaches a key December 15 enrollment deadline to receive coverage beginning January 1.

Pelosi acknowledged that HealthCare.gov will work well for only 80% of visitors by November 30, when officials have promised to have it operating smoothly for the vast majority of them. That could leave 1-in-5 potential enrollees mired in glitches during a brief two-week window before December 15.