October 4, 2016 | No Comments
Former President Bill Clinton on Tuesday evening firmly declared his support for the Affordable Care Act, after causing a dust-up by referring to some of the effects of President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement as “the craziest thing in the world.”
“I want to say this one thing about the healthcare law, because that’s another thing they’ve been trying to tangle in — I supported the Affordable Care Act. I support it today,” he said while campaigning for his wife in Steubenville, Ohio on Tuesday.
“It did a great job in ensuring 25 million more people, and it did something for 100 percent of the people, it says you cannot deny anybody health insurance because of a pre-existing condition,” he continued.
“All of that is important,” he acknowledged, before going on to offer measured criticism of the law, saying, “There is a big problem with it that needs to be fixed, that everybody who knows admits it. If you’re just above the line to qualify for the Medicaid expansion, or just above the line to qualify for the subsidies for small businesses and workers, the likelihood is that your premiums have gone up, your coverage has gone down.”
He went on to say that insurance companies have too much bargaining power in deciding rates, and that people are thus left with expensive health insurance premiums.
On Monday, the former president appeared to rip into Obamacare, saying, “So you’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It’s the craziest thing in the world.”
He attempted to walk back on those comments earlier on Tuesday at a rally in Flint, Michigan, saying, “Look, the Affordable Health Care Act did a world of good, and the 50-something efforts to repeal it that the Republicans have staged were a terrible mistake,” adding, “We, for the first time in our history, at least are providing insurance to more than 90 percent of our people.”