After the opposition-led government shutdown and website glitches, President Barack Obama’s flagship health care program now faces yet another problem. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have received cancellation letters from their insurance companies who are dropping plans that do not comply with the Affordable Care Act. Even some of the most outspoken Obama supporter has begun to speak out against the policy. In an interview published on Tuesday, former president Bill Clinton criticized Obama for not honoring his promise that people would be allowed to “keep what they got.”
The purpose of Obama’s program is to provide better coverage for the majority of Americans. The President very clearly and openly promised in various speeches made even after the bill was passed that those who are satisfied with their current health insurance plans or doctors would not be forced to switch. Then, after the health exchanges had opened and millions of worried customers were receiving cancellation notices, Obama backtracked on his previous statements, claiming that “what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed.”
However, this claim is dishonest. The Obama administration was aware that millions of people would lose their insurance policies since 2010, but promised them anyway in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.” An NBC News investigative report uncovered Obamacare regulations from July of 2010 that calculated “40 to 67 percent” of customers would lose their current plan due to expected changes in individual insurance market policies.
Unfortunately, with cancellation letters piling up and the technical failures of the website keeping people from shopping for new plans, Obamacare is shaping up to be a major inconvenience for many Americans, and an outright nightmare for some.
Obamacare was founded on the principle that every American should have access to affordable health care. Now, the massive surge in cancellation letters and the unsolved technical failures of the website inhibiting people from shopping for new plans have made it the antithesis of its original and honorable goal.
Instead, Obama’s program favors business interests over the people’s interests. If Obama had pushed for a single payer system, like a Medicare for all, then these snags would most likely not have arisen. The government would have been providing insurance, and Americans would not have been receiving cancellation notices. Perhaps this is the time for the president to carefully reflect and reconsider. He should put the public option back on the policy agenda. This would be both the most practical approach to fix the system and the morally right decision.
A version of this article appeared in the Wednesday, Nov. 13 print edition. Email the WSN Editorial Board at [email protected].