you look at something like romneycare, there were a lot of improvement after it passed. we have been implementing it in a flexible, sensible, sound way. we will continue to do that. if congress has any ideas, we are happy to work with them. >> why has it been such a difficult sell to work with republicans from day one? >> you are talking about a party that has voted over 50 times to repeal the affordable care act. that is not a dialogue that we can have. if you get beyond repeal and start to accept that the basic principles of the affordable care act builds on ideas from the heritage foundation, aei, from romneycare, that sets an individual responsibility. a lot of these are conservative ideas. just like conservatives who originally came up with this idea decades ago, they are working. once you admit they are working, you can get to the next age of saying "can we tweak them to make them work even better?" >> what is your best estimation about how the law is affect and for good, bad, or otherwise the labor market? >> the congressional budget office said that right now, an

, the president said they modeled obamacare after romneycare. in a car wreck and couldn't get an m.r.i. after a month or so after the wreck. had to fly back to texas to find out she had broken bones. this is the kind of care we are headed towards. what happens in england, what happens in canada and that's coming to a health care provider near you. you'll get on the list. why? we were told 30 million people didn't have health insurance. real reform would have made not that everybody had insurance but that they had health care that was affordable. and they could get all the health care they needed and it was affordable and in some cases it would have been a whole lot cheaper than having insurance and then having catastrophic insurance for the things you can't afford. those are reforms we wanted to make. and most of us were ok with fixing a problem called pre-existing conditions that it allowed sow insurance companies to really screw over people unfairly. and we offered to address that in a bipartisan manner, but the democrats didn't want our input

montauk the most with massachusetts last, presumably with many people there already covered under romneycare. isn't that something? we'll be right back. >>> welcome back to "hardball." it was a big day for supporters of the president's health care law, which reached a significant milestone today. here was the president this afternoon relaying the news. >> last night, the first open enrollment period under this law came to an end. and despite several lost weeks out of the gate because of problems with the website, 7.1 million americans have now signed up for private insurance plans through these marketplaces. 7.1. >> well, that number, 7.1 million is actually slightly higher than the initial estimate from the congressional budget office. and yet it remains the primary goal of many conservatives to do away with the law entirely. the new budget released today by paul ryan and the budget committee actually calls for its total repeal again. and here is more from the president on that point. >> like every major piece of legislation, from social security to medicare, the law's not perfect. we've ha

montauk the most with massachusetts last, presumably with many people there already covered under romneycare. isn't that something? we'll be right back. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. thousands of people here in alaska are working to safely produce more energy. but that's just the start. to produce more from existing wells, we need advanced technology. that means hi-tech jobs in california and colorado. the oil moves through one of the world's largest pipelines. maintaining it means manufacturing jobs in the midwest. then we transport it with 4 state-of-the-art, double-hull tankers. some of the safest, most advanced ships in the world: built in san diego with a $1 billion investment. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. and no energy company invests more in the u.s. than bp. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that's not a coincidence. it's one more part of our commitment to america. >>> welcome back to "hardball." it was a big day for supporters of