Bill Clinton Urges Pres. Obama To Allow Already-Insured Americans To Keep Their Health Coverage: Is He Right? [VIDEO]
In an interview Tuesday, former Pres. Bill Clinton said that Pres. Barack Obama should honor his promise and allow already-insured Americans who are happy with their health care coverage to keep it, even though the Affordable Care Act doesn’t currently allow it.
"The president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they've got," Clinton said, according to The Daily News.
Clinton was addressing statements made by the Obama administration over the summer in which he repeatedly told insured Americans “If you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan.” Those statements, unfortunately, turned out to be untrue. In fact, about 50 to 75 percent of Americans who already buy insurance will receive cancellation letters because their plans do not comply with the Affordable Care Act. And some of those forced to change coverage may have to buy pricier new policies.
Obama made headlines last week when he apologized for inaccurately stating that insured Americans would be able to keep their policies, even after the implementation of the health care marketplaces.
“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me,” Obama told NBC News. “We've got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this.”
The Affordable Care Act rollout has been a troubled one, to say the least. The website experienced glitches, delays, and even full blown crashes in its first few weeks. As a result, initial reports said that enrollment numbers for insurance under the Act would be extremely low. Just Wednesday, the Obama administration reported that a little more than 106,000 people were able to enroll in health insurance plans in the first month, which is still not as many as was previously expected.
But, despite the glitches, delays, and missteps, Clinton and Obama do agree on one thing: implementing the health care reforms under the Affordable Care Act is better than forcing millions of Americans to remain uninsured.
"We're better off with this program than we are without it,” said Clinton.