President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and other senior administration officials met privately Wednesday with frustrated Senate Democrats facing reelection in 2014 to discuss the botched Obamacare rollout.
The two hour meeting comes as the Obama administration and congressional Democrats work to assess the political fallout from the health care overhaul’s troubled implementation. Lawmakers passed on the frustration expressed by their constituents and the White House walked through their steps to repair the program.
“The American people are frustrated with the White House’s botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act, and I am too,” said Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, one of the chamber’s most vulnerable Democrats. “In today’s meeting, I told the President and Vice President three things: 1) fix the website immediately 2) address the problems with the law and 3) hold the individuals in charge accountable for these mistakes. I won’t let up until these problems are fixed.”
“It was a real policy-heavy meeting,” a Democratic aide said. “The White House chose this group because this is a group that’s going to be ultra-sensitive to their constituents’ frustrations. This needs to be fixed. We all want this to work.”
The members at the meeting were Pryor, Mark Begich of Alaska, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Chris Coons of Delaware, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Al Franken of Minnesota, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Mark Udall of Colorado, Tom Udall of New Mexico, Mark Warner of Virginia and Michael Bennet of Colorado, according to Senate aides and the White House.
Mark Udall said in a statement after the meeting that he wants consumers to have time to shop for a plan and enroll after the problems are repaired.
Via: Fox
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