Former President Bill Clinton endorsed altering a key provision of President Barack Obama’s health-care law, increasing pressure on the administration days before a House vote on a Republican proposal to let Americans keep their current plans through next year.
Clinton, who ranks as one of the most popular figures in the president’s party, stepped into a debate between the White House and some Democratic lawmakers up for re-election next year who are raising alarms over the cancellations of hundreds of thousands of individual insurance policies.
The former president said Obama should keep a pledge he repeatedly made in campaigning for the law that Americans wouldn’t lose coverage they liked when it took effect.
“Even if it takes a change to the law, 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 with the online magazine Ozy published yesterday.
Clinton spoke as Obama is trying to keep Democrats from breaking ranks and opening the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the centerpiece of his first term, to tinkering by Congress, where Republicans have sought to repeal or undermine the law since it was enacted in 2010.
Obama last week offered a public apology over the cancellations and arranged a White House meeting with Senate Democrats who face voters in 2014 to ask for patience as the administration works to remedy the troubled rollout of the federal insurance exchange and the wave of policy cancellations.
[h=2]Administrative Fixes[/h]White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said that the administration is looking at options “that would address this problem” administratively, though he declined to say whether Obama would accept legislation that changed the law.
The No. 2 Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, told reporters yesterday that he wants to see the administration’s fixes “sooner rather than later.”
The health law includes a clause that exempts policies in effect when the law was enacted in March 2010 as long as no major changes were made. Even so, hundreds of thousands of Americans received notices from their insurers that their policies were being canceled next year either because their coverage started after March 2010 or the policy’s terms had changed during in the interim.
[h=2]Coverage Start[/h]About 30 percent of the affected policies began coverage before the bill became law, and the administration can use regulatory authority to expand an exemption by altering its interpretation of what constitutes a major change in a policy, said Ezekiel Emanuel, a University of Pennsylvania professor who worked on the measure as an official at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
Emanuel said it was unclear what administrative authority is available to the White House under other circumstances.
A blanket exemption would risk undermining the financial stability of health plans on the Obamacare insurance exchange by siphoning off the healthiest consumers to cheaper, less-complete plans that do not meet the law’s standards, Emanuel said.
Lawmakers of both political parties seized on Clinton’s remarks. Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said the comments “signify a growing recognition that Americans were misled when they were promised that they could keep their coverage under President Obama’s health care law.”
Boehner also used an excerpt of Clinton’s interview in a YouTube video titled “Obama’s Promise, Clinton’s Solution.”
[h=2]30,000 Calls[/h]Senator Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat running for re-election next year in a state Obama lost in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, sent out an e-mail with Clinton’s comments, promoting them as support for legislation she has proposed to permit consumers to keep current health insurance policies.
“That was a promise clearly made and it should be kept,” Landrieu said at the Capitol.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who is co-sponsoring the legislation, said her office has received 30,000 calls on the cancellation letters, with 87 percent asking for a reversal of the provision that required policies issued after the law took effect to meet minimum requirements.
The House is poised to vote Nov. 15 on a Republican proposal to let individuals keep their health-care plans into next year without penalty.
[h=2]Difficult Position[/h]Representative John Larson, a Connecticut Democrat, said the Republican proposal puts Democratic lawmakers in “a very difficult position.”
“You don’t want to be for people keeping their plan at the expense of people not getting their insurance either,” Larson said. “So that’s the dilemma.”
Representative John Barrow, a Georgia Democrat, already announced support for the Republican-backed a measure. He is among nine Democratic House members who represent districts Obama lost in the 2012 election.
After Obama’s apology in an interview with NBC News on Nov. 7, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House Republicans’ campaign arm, targeted dozens of Democratic lawmakers with a press release to hometown media titled, “Now It’s Your Turn to Apologize.”
Obama’s approval ratings and credibility with the public have sunk as the health-care law’s stumbles have increased. A Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday found 54 percent of registered voters disapprove of how he’s handling his job, with 39 percent approving. That’s his lowest rating in a Quinnipiac poll.
[h=2]Approval Rating[/h]On health care, his approval rating is 36 percent. Voters are were divided when asked whether Obama “knowingly deceived the public” with his pledge that individuals would be able to keep their insurance plans, with 46 percent saying yes and 47 percent answering no. They are also split, 42 percent to 43 percent, on whether they trust Obama or Republicans in Congress to handle health care.
The insurance cancellations for a portion of people who buy policies on the open market came on top of technical faults with the federal website intended to serve as the portal to insurance marketplaces for 36 states that don’t have their own.
To contact the reporters on this story: Mike Dorning in Washington at [email protected]; Roxana Tiron in Washington at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at [email protected]
Clinton, who ranks as one of the most popular figures in the president’s party, stepped into a debate between the White House and some Democratic lawmakers up for re-election next year who are raising alarms over the cancellations of hundreds of thousands of individual insurance policies.
The former president said Obama should keep a pledge he repeatedly made in campaigning for the law that Americans wouldn’t lose coverage they liked when it took effect.
“Even if it takes a change to the law, 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 with the online magazine Ozy published yesterday.
Clinton spoke as Obama is trying to keep Democrats from breaking ranks and opening the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the centerpiece of his first term, to tinkering by Congress, where Republicans have sought to repeal or undermine the law since it was enacted in 2010.
Obama last week offered a public apology over the cancellations and arranged a White House meeting with Senate Democrats who face voters in 2014 to ask for patience as the administration works to remedy the troubled rollout of the federal insurance exchange and the wave of policy cancellations.
[h=2]Administrative Fixes[/h]White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said that the administration is looking at options “that would address this problem” administratively, though he declined to say whether Obama would accept legislation that changed the law.
The No. 2 Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, told reporters yesterday that he wants to see the administration’s fixes “sooner rather than later.”
The health law includes a clause that exempts policies in effect when the law was enacted in March 2010 as long as no major changes were made. Even so, hundreds of thousands of Americans received notices from their insurers that their policies were being canceled next year either because their coverage started after March 2010 or the policy’s terms had changed during in the interim.
[h=2]Coverage Start[/h]About 30 percent of the affected policies began coverage before the bill became law, and the administration can use regulatory authority to expand an exemption by altering its interpretation of what constitutes a major change in a policy, said Ezekiel Emanuel, a University of Pennsylvania professor who worked on the measure as an official at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
Emanuel said it was unclear what administrative authority is available to the White House under other circumstances.
A blanket exemption would risk undermining the financial stability of health plans on the Obamacare insurance exchange by siphoning off the healthiest consumers to cheaper, less-complete plans that do not meet the law’s standards, Emanuel said.
Lawmakers of both political parties seized on Clinton’s remarks. Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said the comments “signify a growing recognition that Americans were misled when they were promised that they could keep their coverage under President Obama’s health care law.”
Boehner also used an excerpt of Clinton’s interview in a YouTube video titled “Obama’s Promise, Clinton’s Solution.”
[h=2]30,000 Calls[/h]Senator Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat running for re-election next year in a state Obama lost in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, sent out an e-mail with Clinton’s comments, promoting them as support for legislation she has proposed to permit consumers to keep current health insurance policies.
“That was a promise clearly made and it should be kept,” Landrieu said at the Capitol.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who is co-sponsoring the legislation, said her office has received 30,000 calls on the cancellation letters, with 87 percent asking for a reversal of the provision that required policies issued after the law took effect to meet minimum requirements.
The House is poised to vote Nov. 15 on a Republican proposal to let individuals keep their health-care plans into next year without penalty.
[h=2]Difficult Position[/h]Representative John Larson, a Connecticut Democrat, said the Republican proposal puts Democratic lawmakers in “a very difficult position.”
“You don’t want to be for people keeping their plan at the expense of people not getting their insurance either,” Larson said. “So that’s the dilemma.”
Representative John Barrow, a Georgia Democrat, already announced support for the Republican-backed a measure. He is among nine Democratic House members who represent districts Obama lost in the 2012 election.
After Obama’s apology in an interview with NBC News on Nov. 7, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House Republicans’ campaign arm, targeted dozens of Democratic lawmakers with a press release to hometown media titled, “Now It’s Your Turn to Apologize.”
Obama’s approval ratings and credibility with the public have sunk as the health-care law’s stumbles have increased. A Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday found 54 percent of registered voters disapprove of how he’s handling his job, with 39 percent approving. That’s his lowest rating in a Quinnipiac poll.
[h=2]Approval Rating[/h]On health care, his approval rating is 36 percent. Voters are were divided when asked whether Obama “knowingly deceived the public” with his pledge that individuals would be able to keep their insurance plans, with 46 percent saying yes and 47 percent answering no. They are also split, 42 percent to 43 percent, on whether they trust Obama or Republicans in Congress to handle health care.
The insurance cancellations for a portion of people who buy policies on the open market came on top of technical faults with the federal website intended to serve as the portal to insurance marketplaces for 36 states that don’t have their own.
To contact the reporters on this story: Mike Dorning in Washington at [email protected]; Roxana Tiron in Washington at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at [email protected]