Red State Gov. Tells Media to Chill Out Because ObamaCare Is Going to Work

Beshear

On Meet the Press Sunday morning, Kentucky Democratic Governor Steve Beshear gave the press some excellent advice that they will most certainly not heed, “Everybody needs to chill out because it (ObamaCare) is going to work.”

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Beshear advised the news media to take a breath, “The advice I would give the news media and the critics up here is, take a deep breath. This is a process. Everybody 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. It took us about three years to get Medicare really working.”

Beshear pointed out that the President is taking responsibility and they are fixing the problems, “I’m not going to give the president advice on hiring and firing, but when things go wrong, like they go wrong in our state, I take responsibility for it and I fix it. That’s what secretary Sebelius and the President are doing, they’re taking responsibility for a bad rollout. They’re going to fix it.”

Then the Democratic Governor explained what the real problem is, and that is that ObamaCare is directed toward wellness and prevention, which are the future of healthcare, “These plans and Medicaid are directed toward prevention and wellness, and that is the future of health care, and I think everybody knows it.”

What he didn’t say but inferred is that Obamacare leaves Republicans nowhere to go on the subject of healthcare reform if they ever get around to actually debating the issue between witch hunts. This is exactly why Republicans never, ever debate the actual issue of healthcare reform – they have no suggestions to fix it, they just want to stop Obama from fixing it.

As the governor of Kentucky, the top state for enrollment in ObamaCare and a state where they did their own exchange as states were supposed to, Beshear is pretty sure people are going to want to sign up, “People are going to sign up for this; it will take us a while to get it in process. But I’ll guarantee you we’re going to make it work because it is good for the American people and it’s good for Kentucky.”

In Kentucky, where 1 in 6 people is uninsured, Gov. Beshear said they’ve enrolled 26,000 people so far, 21,000 of which signed up for Medicaid under the expansion. Host David Gregory pointed out that they need more young, healthy enrollees if the program is going to work, to which Beshear said it takes longer to get signed up for insurance than it does to sign up for Medicaid. (Gregory is a reliable source for Republican talking points, and thus it would have been delicious if Beshear had suggested that if it’s speed and costs to individuals that Republicans are so allegedly worried about, we should start discussing single payer — Medicare for all.)

It’s thanks to Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear that the place that Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell call home loves their ObamaCare, especially including the Medicaid expansion so reviled by Republicans. This is ironic since both Paul and McConnell have been trying to kill ObamaCare for years now.

The Republican base loves their big government so long as it’s not called big government. And that fact is what the Republican party is hoping to keep buried.

Beshear is a bold man who took on the Republicans in his state in order to implement ObamaCare. Now he’s telling the press to chill out. If only they would listen, we could all be spared their hysterical attempts to create a drama in which both parties are at equal risk of self destruction. But they won’t because Meet the Press was very busy this morning falsely equating a bad website rollout with Republicans shutting down the government.


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