WH: Obama agrees with Clinton

The White House on Tuesday said President Obama agrees with former President Clinton that people who like their insurance should be able to keep it under ObamaCare.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said the president has asked his team to look at options that would allow people to keep their insurance.

He also said Obama had already said he wanted to let people keep their insurance during an interview last week with NBC in which he apologized for the millions of people who have seen their policies canceled despite his repeated promise that they could be kept.

{mosads}“The answer is yes,” Carney said. “The president has tasked his team with looking at a range of options as he said to make sure that nobody is put in a position where their plans have been canceled and they can’t afford a better plan.”

Carney said the White House has not finalized any potential fixes so far. 

Clinton in an interview on Tuesday said the administration should consider changing the law to keep Obama’s promise.

“I personally believe, even if it takes a change in the law, that the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they’ve got,” Clinton said in an interview at OZY.com.

Clinton said young people in the individual market who are too wealthy to qualify for tax subsidies were the ones really counting on Obama’s promise.

“For young people mostly, but not all young, who are in the individual market whose incomes are above 400 percent of the poverty level — they were the ones who heard the promise that if you like what you’ve got you can keep it,” Clinton said.

Obama last week said he was asking his team to close “holes and gaps in the law.”

“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,” he said at the time.

Millions of people who buy insurance on the individual market have received cancellation notices for existing plans since implementation of the healthcare law began last month.

The administration has continuously said the individual market only makes up 5 percent of people, and those receiving cancellation notices would have additional options on the exchanges, likely with better benefits.

The House is scheduled to vote Friday on legislation that would allow people on the individual market to keep their plans. A number of Democrats are expected to vote for it. Companion legislation in the Senate has gained some Democratic support.

Asked about the difficulty in getting a fix through Congress, Carney said the administration would search for an option that is effective, not one that would be unlikely to succeed.

This story was updated at 1:53 p.m.

Tags Bill Clinton Healthcare Obama Presidency of Barack Obama

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