Clinton: Let people keep coverage

President Obama should change the healthcare law so that people can keep their existing health insurance plans, former President Clinton said Tuesday.

In an interview with OZY.com, Clinton said Obama should honor his promise that people could keep their plans under ObamaCare if they liked them.

{mosads}“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 recounted the story of a young man he met who had two children and saw his policy canceled. The man replaced his coverage but his premium doubled, Clinton said, although the lower co-pays meant he might save money over the years that he uses the plan.

“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.

President Obama apologized last week to Americans who are losing their healthcare coverage.

Millions of Americans have received cancellation notices from their insurance companies saying they couldn’t keep their current plans because they don’t meet the minimum requirements under the new law.

Some Democrats initially blamed the insurance companies, saying they were the ones choosing to drop the plans and that there was nothing in the law that required them to do so. The White House has also argued that those affected are only a small percentage of those seeking coverage in the individual marketplace.

But Obama last week suggested that he might be open to altering the law in a way to allow those who are losing their policies to be “grandfathered in.”



“I’ve assigned my team to see what we can do to close some of the holes and gaps in the law,” Obama said.

Legislation has been offered in the House and Senate to address the issue.

In the Senate, the legislation has been proposed by a group of red state Democrats who have become increasingly willing to speak out against the botched ObamaCare rollout, as many face tough reelection prospects in 2014.