Obama’s broken promise means broken trust

 

It is not surprising that for the first time in the last two years President Barack Obama’s approval rating dropped below 40 percent this week, according to Gallup.

Obama made a confident promise in 2009, but it turned out to be a lie.

His promise was: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

Now, with the Affordable Care Act in effect, many people are losing their own health care plans because they don’t fit the mandated requirements of the Affordable Care Act.

According to a White House official speaking for Obama, about half of the the 12 to 15 million people that by health insurance on the individual marketplace will be adversely affected by the Affordable Care Act.

However, Obama claims those affected will be “better off,” and they don’t know it yet because the website is still down.

For a bill that Obama fought for over the course of an entire term, plus a year into the next, these issues should not happen.

It’s a lack of attention to detail that brings questions on how much Obama can be trusted when it comes to his promises to fix the issue.

In addition to the broken promise, the Obamacare website is still full of glitches and bugs, and according to CNN, it will continue to be nonoperational for a significant amount of time.

Obama issued an apology on CNN saying that he’s “sorry” for the people suffering due to his “confidence” in his health care reform and that his administration will fix the issue.

House Speaker John Boehner is creating a bipartisan bill that will fix the issue and he is interested if Obama will back it, according to CNN. Boehner has said if the president is sincerely sorry the very least he can do is support this bipartisan effort, otherwise his apology amounts to nothing.

Obama’s health care reform will undoubtedly be the biggest representation of his two terms of presidency. Unfortunately for Obama, it is full of flaws that are undermining the seriousness of it and hurting his legacy.

If this reform was so vital to his presidency, there’s no excuse for the overlooked mistakes. Many arguments previously made by Obama’s critics are proving true, and it seems the Affordable Care Act may never be as functional and beneficial as Obama originally promised.

James Baker is a freshman majoring in political science and economics.