He apparently took Pelosi’s advice about passing the law to find out what’s in it.

Via Oregon Live:

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, acknowledging that he failed to anticipate how the new health care law would lead to a wave of health insurance cancellations, on Wednesday  co-sponsored legislation that would allow consumers to keep their current policies if they want.

Merkley, who is up for re-election next year, joined fellow Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu in pushing legislation aimed at reassuring millions of Americans who have received insurance cancellation notices as the new health care law goes into full effect in January.

In a telephone interview, Merkley said that he and other supporters of the 2010 law failed to understand that it didn’t have strong enough “grandfather” provisions ensuring that people could keep policies that existed at the time.

“It was a significant failure to understand that the grandfathering had this flaw in it,” said Merkley, “and now that it’s recognized, we’ve got to fix it.”

The senator added that “we just didn’t fully understand” that during the three years before the new law went completely into effect, many people would migrate to other coverage or be forced off these grandfathered plans.

HT: Jim Geraghty