House Democrats are united in their approach to addressing the botched rollout of President Obama’s healthcare law, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday.
Although a growing number of rank-and-file members have threatened to buck their leadership and support a GOP proposal allowing people to keep their insurance plans, Pelosi suggested those divisions have been exaggerated.
“We’re all of one mind,” Pelosi said during a press briefing in the Capitol. “There is no disagreement in our Caucus. We have to have a fix. … And we will.”
The comments came roughly an hour before President Obama was to unveil an administrative plan to delay for one year the cancellation notices affecting millions of patients whose insurance plans don’t meet the minimum coverage requirements under the 2010 healthcare law. Millions have received notice they will lose their plans.
Those cancellations have caused an uproar on Capitol Hill, leading to outrage from members of both parties.
Republicans have charged that Obama broke one of his central promises surrounding the law, providing further evidence that the law should be scrapped altogether.
Democrats, meanwhile, are up in arms that they’ve been forced to defend the law they championed in the face of countless negative headlines. Many view the administration’s rollout of the individual mandate as a bumbling affair absent any coherent messaging strategy or outreach plan.
“Nobody is [as] unhappy as I am about the rollout,” Pelosi said Thursday. “Well, maybe the president of the United States.”
Pelosi said she’s been briefed on Obama’s plan, but she declined to offer her assessment.
GOP leaders, meanwhile, were quick to pan Obama’s strategy.
“I am highly skeptical of their ability to do this administratively,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday, just moments before Obama’s announcement.
House Democrats are scheduled to huddle at 2:30 p.m. Thursday in the Capitol to discuss the president’s strategy, as well as their own legislative alternative to the Republican bill, which is scheduled for a House vote on Friday.
The Democrats at Thursday’s caucus meeting will be joined by several administration officials, including White House chief of staff Denis McDonough; Mike Hash, director of the Office of Health Reform at the Department of Health and Human Services; and Chris Jennings, a top adviser to Obama on health policy.
Democratic leaders will meet the press afterward to lay out their position.