Under mounting political pressure, President Barack Obama announced Thursday the decision to grant a one-year reprieve on those health-care policies that would have otherwise been canceled under Obamacare.

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Reports estimate 4 million to 5 million cancellation notices have been issued nationwide to date—over a million expected in California alone.

"This is a mess…and it continues to get messier," said California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom on "The Kudlow Report."

California's state health exchange has fared better than the federally run exchange plagued by technical glitches since its Oct. 1 launch. Covered California reports 30,830 enrollees in the first month of operation compared with the 26,794 reported this week by the Department of Health and Human Services.

(Read more: Obamacare rollout numbers much worse than expected)

"California is doing the best of any state in this country," said Newsom, a Democrat. "We are trying our best, in good faith, not to have the partisan acrimony that's defining this debate in Washington, D.C., and we're making real progress. But there's no question that the announcement ... offers more questions than it does answers."

Newsom said that, while the decision to allow insurers to extend current plans into 2014 was a political one, the policy implications of the new administrative fix could lead to larger political problems in the long term.

But, referring to the president's oft-stated, "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan," commitment, Newsom said, "I applaud the president for at least acknowledging the obvious: The promise that was made wasn't kept."

—By CNBC's Krista Braun.