Former Clinton administration insider Lanny Davis still believes in Obamacare, but he says his fellow Democrats, including the president, should admit mistakes and work to fix them.
"We didn't say it right," Davis said Wednesday on Fox News Channel's
"The Kelly File."
"This has gone wrong. And we Democrats, like myself, who supported this legislation, need to admit that it's gone wrong," Davis added. President Barack Obama needs to tell the public that he underestimated the number of changes that would occur, he said.
Obama promised on more than 30 occasions before, during and after the passage of the Affordable Care Act that people could keep their current insurance plans if they liked them. Now, he is says he maintained all along that people can keep plans as long as they
meet the new regulations the law imposes.
Davis said Obama should have told people they would have to pay more for more coverage, that they might lose their current policy and doctor, and that they might have to have to pay higher premiums to get more coverage.
"Now that we know that we didn't say it right, and we have regulations imposing costs that maybe we can get rid of, I think the president could step up to the line and say, you know what, when something's broken let's fix it," Davis said.
But Davis added that any administration tends to get into a bunker mentality when under attack. Davis is a paid Fox News contributor, and he said the Obama White House even
looks at him as an adversary when he is critical of them on the network or in his columns.
Davis said the HealthCare.gov website should be replaced with a functioning private sector site until all the bugs are. Both the multiple technical issues and the unexpected high costs and loss of plans are not helping, he said.
"They're terrible," he said. "They're hurting our cause."