Anyone who follows the news at all closely has probably heard about the problems going on with the new healthcare law. There's the website, for one thing, which seems to be suffering some pretty serious problems at this point in time. Then there's the fact that President Obama told people they would be able to keep their plans and yet their insurers are now cancelling their plans, leading some commentators to accuse Obama of dishonesty.
Recently, in response to these issues, Obama gave an apologetic speech addressing what he called "fumbles" in the rollout of the law and in regards to the cancellation of policies the healthcare law has caused. He admitted that, of course, something more than just words was needed to solve the problems, and promised to help the people negatively affected by the problems that have been occurring. He also recently enacted a change of procedure that will allow everyone to keep their current plan at least through 2014.
Obama probably said the only things he could say in the speech he gave, and I don't think there was much else he could do. In terms of the website, it seems pretty clear at this point the preparation for it was insufficient, which was obviously an error in judgment. I also fault the president for doing a poor job of explaining the situation with the new regulations; overwhelmingly, people will be able to keep their current policies, but some will be cancelled by the providers due to new regulations (the regulations don't require these policies to be cancelled, but they do indirectly cause it at times). The president should have simply been completely honest about the situation and made an argument for the regulations in question. The delay of them really probably won't gain him much credibility and just puts off enforcing regulations that I believe are important, so I think it's a mistake.
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