On Thursday, President Barack Obama apologized for lying to the American people about whether they could keep their insurance plans under Obamacare. Millions of Americans have received cancellation letters from their insurance companies after the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges went into effect in October.
“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me,” Obama told NBC’s Chuck Todd. “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.”
While campaigning for the passage of Obamacare and during the 2012 campaign, Obama repeatedly assured Americans that they would be able to keep their doctors and healthcare plans under Obamacare.
“If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan, period,” Obama said in a 2009 speech to the American Medical Association. “No one will take it away, no matter what.”
Earlier this week, Obama revised that promise, saying that what he had meant was Americans could keep their plans “if it hasn’t changed since the law passed.”
“Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed,” Obama said. “So we wrote into the Affordable Care Act, you’re grandfathered in on that plan. But if the insurance company changes it, then what we’re saying is they’ve got to change it to a higher standard.
“They’ve got to make it better, they’ve got to improve the quality of the plan they are selling. That’s part of the promise that we made too. That’s why we went out of our way to make sure that the law allowed for grandfathering.”
That was the second time in a week Obama attempted to revise his promise to Americans after he was called out for his lie by reporters in the mainstream press. Obama has alleged that only Americans who had “substandard” insurance plans were the ones receiving cancellation letters.