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Former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm took on Republican attacks about the extremely problematic rollout of Healthcare.gov during her Sunday appearance on Meet the Press.
“This is an argument about a broken website versus a broken political party,” she said, noting the attempt to link the Republicans’ intentional government shutdown, which cost the economy $24 billion, with the troubled rollout of the site that is the primary point of entry for the Affordable Care Act’s health care marketplaces.
“The Republicans have many opportunities to conflate the website with Obamacare because they have to justify why they shut down the government for weeks,” she said.
Also on the show was Governor Steve Beshear (D-KY), whose state has successfully rolled out its own exchange, as all states were invited to do under the Affordable Care Act.
“This is working in Kentucky,” Beshear said. “We had and have some of the worst health statistics in the country, and it’s been that way for generations. The only way we’re going to get ourselves out of the ditch is some transformational tool, and that’s what the Affordable Care Act is going to do for us.”
The governor rejected the notion that the earlier failures of Healthcare.gov, which suggest larger implementation problems for the law, have doomed the reforms.
“This is a process,” Beshear said. “Everyone wants to have a date where they can declare victory or defeat or success or failure. That’s not what this is going to be all about.”
(h/t PoliticusUSA)
Screenshot via Meet the Press
