Former President Bill Clinton critiqued on Monday an aspect of the Affordable Care Act that he called “the craziest thing in the world,” while slamming Republicans for their vows to repeal President Obama’s signature legislative accplishment.
Speaking at a Hillary Clinton campaign rally in Flint, Michigan, the former president criticized Donald Trump’s stance, which Clinton described as, “Oh, just repeal it all. The market will take care of it,” according to a video posted by CNN.
“That didn’t work out very well for us, did it? We wound up with the most expensive system in the world and we insured the smallest percentage of people,” Clinton said. “On the other hand, the current system works fine if you’re eligible for Medicaid, if you’re a lower income working person, if you’re already on Medicare, or if you get enough subsidies on a modest income that you can afford your health care.”
Clinton then focused his assessment of Obamacare on the subset of health care consumers who make too much too qualify for the subsidies and must foot the bill for increasing premiums on their own.
“But the people that are getting killed in this deal are small businesspeople and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies. Why? Because they’re not organized, they don’t have any bargaining power with insurance companies, and they’re getting whacked,” Clinton said. “So you’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden, 25 million more people have health care and then the people that are out there busting it — sometimes 60 hours a week — wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.”
He went on to call that scenario the “the craziest thing in the world.”
According to a transcript of an extended version of the remarks sent to TPM by a Clinton spokesperson, the former president then offered a potential solution: letting people buy in to the Medicaid or Medicare programs at an “affordable rate.”
“So Hillary believes we should simply let people who are above the line for getting these subsidies have access to affordable entry into the Medicare and Medicaid programs,” Clinton said, according to the transcript. “They’ll all be covered, it will not hurt the program, we will not lose a lot of money. And we ought to do it.”
The comments — and particularly the “craziest thing in the world” line– were quickly touted by Republicans as proof that even Democrats were turning on President Obama’s legislative achievement, which has seen a run of bad headlines recently.
“With premiums continuing to skyrocket, state insurance markets collapsing and businesses struggling to comply with its job-killing mandates, even Democrats like Bill Clinton are coming to realize just what bad public policy ObamaCare really is,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement to The Hill.
Meanwhile, Angel Urena, a spokeswoman for Bill Clinton, said that the former President has also praised the Affordable Care Act for “the good it has done” in expanding coverage.
“And while he was slightly short-handed, it’s clear to everyone, including President Obama, that improvements are needed,” Urena said in a statement that also pointed to Hillary Clinton’s health care proposals.
“She’ll build on the progress we’ve made by increasing competition, choice, affordability and the number of Americans with insurance,” Urena said.
