White House on ObamaCare: GOP Governors Value Politics over Lives

“We've seen a tens of millions if not hundreds of millions to dollars being spent by the president's political opponents to distort the facts about the true impact the Affordable Care Act.

So this is a -- this is money plain and simple, and what we have said is that the more that the American people understand the benefits that are associated with this law, the more people will approve of it, or at at least more that the  approval of this will show up in polls. 

But frankly we're not concerned about the numbers in the polls we’re concerned about the numbers that demonstrate the impact of this law. And whether it's sixty million of people being uninsured, people getting access to health care coverage since the law went into effect, that's pretty good number. 

The decline in the overall insurance uninsured rate dropping 35 percent; that's a pretty good number. The historically low growth in health care costs since the Affordable Care Act went into effect; that's a good number too. 

So that's what we're monitoring and that's why the presidents has placed such a premium, among members of his team, on the implementation of this law. We are only building momentum and we're certainly pleased but the progress that we've seen so far, but there continues to be a lot of work that needs to get done. And I think probably the best example of that that I can highlight for you is the continued resistance that we've seen in some quarters to the expansion of Medicaid. 

There continue to be Republicans across the country who are blocking the expansion of Medicaid in a way that literally prevents individuals in their states from getting badly needed health care coverage. That would be a hundred percent paid for by the federal government. And for the life of me, I can't understand why anybody would reach that conclusion. But some Republicans in this case are quite literally putting their political ambition against the lives of some people in their state. 

That’s a shame and that’s unfortunate but it's consistent with the kind of political opposition that we've seen from Republicans to what, in many cases, is a pretty common sense implementation of the law.”