0 care as anybody else. >> today the president defended his health care law against a chorus of disingenuous critics who are suddenly very concerned that people are having trouble signing up through healthcare.gov. >> obama care is, indeed, a train wreck. i mean, a visit to the website is kind of like a trip to the department of motor vehicles in your state. >> i've heard that they've had over 8 million hits, and so far, they have people in the single digits that have signed up. >> i've been online waiting on hold virtually for 89 straight hours, still can't get signed up. >> i'm hearing firsthand the frustrations from my constituents. one constituent said "the program freezes up when i try to enter your tax filing status." >> this is the same political movement that just a few months ago was encouraging people to cripple obama care by not signing up. >> there's a grassroots effort sweeping the nation to encourage young people to opt out of the law. >> most young people don't realize, they have the opportunity to opt out of obama care. >> did you know obama care may be hazardous to your health? >> may be. >> ah! >> the burn your obama care campaign is about telling young people that this is bad for you. >> you know, there's only one small problem with this burn your obama care card plan, there are no such things as obama care cards. >> conservatives have gone from anti-obama care hysterics to complaining about people not being able to use the law in question. yes, the very same people who said obama care was going to hurt americans -- >> these are hard, working class americans who are on the verge of being punished, because as you said, this law was built on broken promises. >> -- are now saying it's a shame the government can't get its website to work. >> in the 21st century, setting up a website where people can go on and buy something is not that complicate ed complicated. >> republicans who said the president's health care law will literally kill people -- >> repeal this failure before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens. >> those republicans are still skeptical, but now they're much more reasonable. >> so, let's make this voluntary for people. if it's great, people will sign up. if not, people will find another way. >> and it's not surprising, given the governance record of their last president that republicans seem eager at the opportunity to level the score politically. jonathan strong tweeted "is obama care president obama's iraq war"? a conservative columnist with the "new york post" tweeted "this obama speech could be the equivalent of bush speaking from new orleans two weeks after katrina." 4,489 american service members and over 100,000 civilians died during the iraq war. 1,833 people died in the waters of katrina. three weeks into the launch of obama care and the website is indeed buggy. so, next time you hear concern from conservatives about obama care implementation, remember, it's best not to take medical advice from an undertaker. joining me now, former congressman barney frank, democrat from massachusetts. congressman, i imagine you were quite touched by the out pouring of concern and technical critique and acumen being exhibited by the center right in these days of the obama care rollout. how do you see this as someone who has gone through the health care battles over a set of numerous decades? >> well, first, i wish it was coming to the center right. i wish we had a center right. i spent most of my time in politics working with people who are in the center right, whether it was mike oxley when he shared the committee or senator alan simpson. the sad fact of american politics today is that the right has eaten up its center. secondly, obviously, it is hypocrisy, but i do want to be clear, the obama administration be fixed in plenty of time before it hurts anybody. and yeah, there is great hypocrisy. and you know, you also have to say this notion of taking over medical care, we can't get the government take this big role in medical care. actually, it is medicare. >> right. >> we ought to stress, again, the government role in medicare, which not even the most right wing republicans are ready to get rid of these days. they thought about it and backed off, is far greater than it will be under the affordable health care act. in medicare, there is much more government involvement in the actual delivery of services. >> not only that, i mean, one of the great ironies here is, of course, that the paul ryan plan for medicare, or the most recent iteration of it, would be something that looks a lot like the obama care exchanges. essentially would be, yes, that's what he wants to do for medicare. in fact, that's what the republican party has voted in lock-step partisan line for is essentially government running an exchange that medicare would be phased into. and so, i think that -- >> and i'll tell you this. >> please. >> when i was in office and i got a complaint from someone who felt that he or she was being treated unfairly with regard to health insurance, we and my staff of great people learned right away, if they were people who were on medicare, if they were people who there was government involvement, we would have likely been able to help them if they were treated badly. if they were dealing with the private insurance sector where there wasn't a government role, there wasn't anything we could do for them. the people being mistreated by the private health sector, whether out of malice or more often out of incompetence, we couldn't help them. with regard to medicare, we could do a much better job. >> finally, congressman, do you think we're going to see members of congress, republican members of congress come around to actually being genuinely invested in fixing the affordable care act, in getting it working as opposed to investing in destroying it, the longer it goes on? >> no. look, let's be clear, people ask me, when did bipartisanship end in america? it ended on january 21st, 2009. when george bush came to the democratic congress in 2008 and said, you know, as a result of these deregulatory policies -- he didn't admit that, but, we're in a terrible situation, we worked with him. 2009, mitch mcconnell announces that his number one goal is to defeat obama, and no, they haven't been constructive about anything. they didn't cooperate with us, forget about health care, which you may say is a big ideological problem for them. we couldn't get them to work with us in either the house or the senate constructively on financial reform or trying to regulate derivatives, on setting up a consumer bureau. >> my favorite example, the office of the printer of the united states, which had to be recess appointed because he was being stone-walled by republicans. former congressman barney frank, thank you so much. joining me now, michael dyson, professor of sociology at georgetown university. medicare funding gets approval, more ohioans through the medicaid expansion, which has gotten less coverage, but is doing a lot more than anything we're seeing on the exchanges right now. >> absolutely right, and it's part of the hypocrisy here, because it's been an accepted governmental program that the republicans dare not now offer a program, then they support it silently, and the irony is, you won't even let this fledgling program -- yes, bugs aside, get buggy with it on the will smith tip. but the reality is, once they get those bugs out, as the president said today, the stuff is good. what it's leading to is great, and it's comparable to what you're now defending on the other side here. so, you know, it's not a matter of apples and oranges. it's apples and apples, and one of them, one set of green, one set of red, but let it go up, so to speak. let it mature. >> this is the argument from democrats. 20 years from now, it will be unthinkable for republicans to oppose obama care. >> that's a great way of putting it and that's absolutely right, because it will benefit the very people that they ostensively are protecting. their populous out there that they say, we're speaking on behalf of those people, those people will be so ingratiated, so to speak, with this program that they will be the most ardent defenders. >> i want to play something that senator james inhofe had to say recently about obama care. >> okay. >> take a listen. >> a person can find out here in the united states that he has this emergency situation where he's got to have immediate heart surgery. and if you're in a country other than the united states, a lot of them, you can't get it done. in my case, with my age, it would have been about a six-month wait, because i hadn't had a heart attack. and so, the message there is that, you know, i say this to all your american listeners, let's hold on to what we've got here. you're talking to someone right now who probably wouldn't be here if we had socialized medicine in america. >> that's inhofe, who just survived a quadruple bypass. that zombie argument that, a, we're socializing medicine, and that b, it's terrible everywhere else in the world, refuses to die. >> oh, my god, and it flies in the face of logic, because first of all, the exact opposite is true. to talk about obama care as socialized medicine, those of us on left and progressives, hey, where is it? we'd love to see it, but it ain't here. >> medicare expansion's a lot more like socialized medicine. that's the one doing well. >> that's right. that's what they're riding on, and they keep suckling from it, but they cannot give acknowledge acknowledgement on the other side. and the flip side is people from all over the world, hey, you know, we're over here, if something happens to us, we're able to get care immediately. >> right. >> so, this argument about socialized medicine being wrong, on the flip side of that argument is, people in other countries that have access to health care in a broad fashion much more likely are to prevent themselves from getting the emergency kind of treatments that were mandated by his -- >> and what's fascinating to me here is the fact that what you end up with is republicans and everyone in the political conversation having to take a hard look at the fact that this thing is here now and people are wrestling with it because the status quo of what a lot of people have is so terrible. >> it's bad. >> that i think is what we'll see develop more politically as this rollout continues. msnbc contributor michael eric dyson. thank you so much. >> thank you. coming up -- >> i hope washington, in all seriousness, is listening, because this is impacting people in every state, from every corner of this country, and yet, they are tone-deaf. they will not listen to what the reality is, and that is the shame of all this. >> well, at least one person was listening and he took it upon himself to rereport the stories of each of sean hannity's guests, and he found -- drum roll -- they were completely misleading, and that is being nice about it.