Dean: Republicans Delayed Obamacare With 'Monkey Wrenches'

Republicans threw "monkey wrenches" into Obamacare and are partly to blame for the rocky rollout of the HealthCare.gov website, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean charged Thursday.

"In all fairness, you've got to blame the Republicans for some of this, because they delayed everything they possibly could — threw as many monkey wrenches into the process as they could," Dean said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

The former Vermont governor and presidential candidate said the process would have been more efficient if more Republican-controlled state governments had agreed to establish their own online insurance exchanges, as originally called for in the Affordable Care Act. He blamed GOP governors and legislators for not acting responsibly on behalf of their uninsured.

At the same time, he said the administration should have divided states without their own exchanges into regions, each with its own separate federally-run website for enrolling the uninsured rather than rely on one massive government site to handle enrollment for most of the country.

"The problem is, they shouldn't have done a single-size-fits-all for the states [without exchanges]. Partly, I have to say, they had to do that because the Republican governors refused to accept exchanges," Dean said, adding that "the states with [their own] exchanges are doing pretty well."

There are 30 states with Republican governors. Only four of them, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, opted to set up their own insurance exchange programs to enroll the uninsured, according to the administration.

Related stories:

• Major Parts of Obamacare Website Out of Order Until Further Notice
  
• WSJ: Hotline Works No Better Than Obamacare Website