WASHINGTON -- Health policy experts had varying responses Monday to President Obama's recent remarks about congressional Republicans hoping to repeal his signature 2010 health law.
At a press conference Friday afternoon, the president said repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would at this point only prevent millions of current uninsured Americans from gaining access to health coverage.
The president has become increasing critical of the GOP's efforts to derail the ACA as the Oct. 1 start date for open enrollment approaches. Here's what the president said on Friday:
"Now, I think the really interesting question is why it is that my friends in the other party have made the idea of preventing these people from getting healthcare their holy grail, their No. 1 priority," Obama said in response to a question about selectively implementing the law after delaying the ACA's employer-coverage mandate for a year.
"The one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don't have healthcare and, presumably, repealing all those benefits I just mentioned -- kids staying on their parents' plan; seniors getting discounts on their prescription drugs; I guess a return to lifetime limits on insurance; people with preexisting conditions continuing to be blocked from being able to get health insurance.
"That's hard to understand as an agenda that is going to strengthen our middle class. At least they used to say, well, we're going to replace it with something better. There's not even a pretense now that they're going to replace it with something better."
Here is what the experts told MedPage Today when asked for their thoughts on Obama's comments.
Gail Wilensky, PhD, senior fellow at Project HOPE and former Medicare administrator:
"Some Republicans have offered important alternative visions of care like [Sens. Richard] Burr (N.C.) and [Tom] Coburn, MD (Okla.), in the Senate and [Rep. Paul] Ryan (Ohio) in the House. The Republicans trying to defund Obamacare, which as Ryan has indicated is not so easy to do even if the government was shut down, haven't offered useful options but they are definitely not all or even most congressional Republicans.
"It's not attempting to make any distinction that makes me say Obama is just engaging in political rhetoric. There are a group of conservative Republicans who want to get rid of Obamacare however they can, but this does not represent the Republican leadership on the House or Senate nor does it represent some of the new leadership like Paul Ryan. As has been true for much of the first term and all of the second term thus far, the President's focus is primarily political rather than substantive."
Tim Jost, JD, law professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va.:
"The president is absolutely right. The Republicans in Congress and in some states have become a single-issue party in their fanatical pursuit of blocking healthcare reform. Under normal circumstances, we could improve the law through technical corrections. These are, unfortunately, not normal times. A decade from now, we will look back at this and wonder why it was so hard to do the right thing for millions of Americans."
Ted Marmor, PhD, professor emeritus at Yale University:
"This is talking point posturing, almost as bad as the Republican distortions of Obamacare's liabilities. The president is 3 years late and rhetorically unconvincing about the reform's difficulties. He failed ... to explain the complicated reform mosaic he felt he had to agree to if he wanted any progress.
Peter Jacobson, JD, MPH, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor:
"Each of these responses is important, but won't mean much if the administration fails to develop a sustained campaign to reiterate these messages on a regular basis. In particular, the administration needs to place great emphasis on the key features of the law that almost everyone agrees are significant changes in how healthcare is delivered.
"Until now, the administration has done a poor job of communicating the ACA's benefits. If these remarks begin the process of confronting the law's critics, we might look back on this press conference as the beginning of the administration's counterattack. As a supporter of the ACA, I certainly hope so."
Alan Sager, PhD, of Boston University:
"I see coverage of successive House votes to defund ACA or otherwise prevent ACA provisions from being implemented. The president has framed the discussion differently: What are the two real-world options? I'd guess this is at least as worthy of coverage as the House votes."
Joe White, PhD, of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland:
"I would add only that the Republican position is also that, if there are any problems, they will not do what used to be normal with complex legislation -- passing 'technical corrections' to fix it if necessary. So, for example, if there was a drafting error in the legislative language, Congress and the president would agree to correct the law so it did what it was supposed to do.
"For the current Republicans, any such flaws are not a problem but an opportunity: an opportunity to score points by criticizing performance or, even better, for a lawsuit."