Fact Check: Michael Bloomberg Claims He Is ‘a Fan of Obamacare’

CLAIM: Michael Bloomberg said he is “a fan of Obamacare” and promoted the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in Washington in 2009.

VERDICT: FALSE

During the Democrat debate in Las Vegas Wednesday evening, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg boasted that he has been “a fan of Obamacare” and recalled that he even promoted the health care law among other mayors while in Washington, DC, in 2009.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, however, shot back at Bloomberg and accused him of criticizing former President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, even calling it “a disgrace.”

Biden is correct.

On July 16, 2010, Bloomberg delivered the inaugural Dartmouth Presidential Lecture in which he discussed his “experiences in government, philanthropy, and business.”

During his address, Bloomberg said:

We passed a health care bill that does absolutely nothing to fix the big health care problems in this country. It is just a disgrace. The president in all fairness started out by pointing out what the big problems were, but then turned it over to Congress, which didn’t pay any attention to any of those big problems, and just created another program that’s going to cost a lot of money. And it’s really sad because they say they’ve insured or provided coverage for another 45 million people, except there’s no doctors for 45 million more people.

In November 2014, CNN Business reported Bloomberg called Obama’s health care and financial reforms “really dysfunctional.”

According to the report:

“What happens is every little group in Congress has to add something to that bill in return for their votes, and a lot of those things are just mutually exclusive,” he [Bloomberg] said. “Years later now we don’t have the regulations that are required and complying with it is just really impossible.”

The same goes for Obamacare, Bloomberg asserted.

Bloomberg added the Obama administration should have crafted the health care reform bill using input from medical experts prior to having Congress complete it.

“It’s going to take a lot of years to adjust those bills to get to some place you should have been in the beginning,” he said.