Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday that he had a rare moment of agreement with former President Bill Clinton: they concurred that Americans should be allowed to keep their old insurance policies.
“I’m inclined to agree with Bill Clinton,” Cheney told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “That’s something that ought to be attempted. But given the complexity of the system, you already got people that lost their policies, who can’t get new ones. These policies have been declared by law to be inadequate because of the standards written into federal regulations. I’m not quite sure how you go — peel back that onion.”
Clinton said earlier Tuesday in an interview with the website OZY that Obama should do everything he can to fulfill his “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” promise, even if it means changing the health care law so that old plans aren’t cancelled.
But Cheney wasn’t exactly sure how the President could act on that promise. He called the health care law a serious “foul-up” and suggested that it should simply be repealed.
“You got a situation here where do you go back out to the people whose policies have been canceled and give them a new policy and — just repeal Obamacare?” he said. “I don’t know, maybe. But it is hard to think of how you are going to actually implement that.”
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday that Obama also agreed that he should, as Clinton put it, “honor the commitment” he made in assuring Americans could keep the health plans they liked. The president was looking at a “range of options” to address cancellations on the individual market, Carney said.
[h/t Politico]
This post has been updated.
