Though President Obama had planned to unveil the new, shorter Affordable Care Act application form during his press conference Tuesday, other comments he made about the law receive much more attention in the national papers Wednesday. In response to questions about whether implementation of the ACA will turn into a “train wreck,” as Senator Max Baucus predicted recently, Obama acknowledged that the next year will no doubt see “glitches and bumps.” However, most sources note that he ultimately was optimistic about the rollout, saying, “We’ve got a great team in place. We are pushing very hard to make sure we are hitting the deadlines and the benchmarks.”
The Wall Street Journal (5/1, Radnofsky, Subscription Publication) reports President Barack Obama admitted on Tuesday that the Affordable Care Act, the signature legislation of his first term, may face “bumps” in its implementation. The article explains that two main provisions of the law, intended to extend insurance to those Americans without it, have hit snags that have presented problems to the Administration. First, over half the states have thus far opted out of Medicaid expansion, meaning millions of low-income Americans who were supposed to be covered by 2014 will not be. Second, 33 states chose not to run their own insurance exchange, adding to the Federal government’s implementation burden. As Obama said Tuesday, “Even if we do everything perfectly, there will still be glitches and bumps.”
