In an interview with NBC News, President Barack Obama apologized Thursday that people were seeing their health insurance policies canceled under Obamacare, despite the president’s earlier pledge that they woud not.
“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me,” Obama said, according to a portion of an interview released by NBC News. “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.”
The Obama interview is scheduled to air on NBC and MSNBC Thursday evening. A full transcript of the interview has not been released.
TPM has previously reported on what’s next for many of the people receiving those cancelation letters.
UPDATE: 6:45 p.m.
Here is a more detailed transcript of Obama’s comments.
“First of all, I meant what I said. And we worked hard to try to make sure that we implemented it properly. But obviously, we didn’t do a good enough job, and I regret that,” he said.
The president continued to stress that many plans currently offered on the individual market are subpar.
“Keep in mind that most of the folks who got these cancellation letters, they’ll be able to get better care at the same cost or cheaper in these new marketplaces,” he said. “Because they’ll have more choice. They’ll have more competition. They’re part of a bigger pool. Insurance companies are going to be hungry for their business.”
But he repeated several times that he regretted the situation.
“I regret very much that what we intended to do — which is to make sure that everybody is moving into better plans because they want them, as opposed to because they’re forced into it — that, we weren’t as clear as we needed to be in terms of the changes that were taking place,” Obama said. “And I want to do everything we can to make sure that people are finding themselves in a good position, a better position than they were before this law happened.”
