BOSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on
Wednesday that "bad apple" insurance companies, not his signature
healthcare law, are to blame for hundreds of thousands of people losing
their coverage in the past few weeks.
As administration officials
scrambled to fix technical problems on an online insurance marketplace
that is central to the success of the Affordable Care Act, Obama blamed
private insurers for a separate problem that has critics questioning his
honesty.
The president has repeatedly promised that people who
are happy with their health plans would not have to change coverage
because of the law, known as Obamacare.
But the termination of
individual policies has given his Republican opponents additional
ammunition to criticize the program they have tried to stop since its
inception in Obama's first term.
Republicans' assertion that
Obama had broken a major promise to the electorate is potentially more
damaging than the glitch-ridden website rollout on October 1.
Obama's approval rating hit a new low in a NBC News/Wall Street Journal
poll issued on Wednesday, a result the pollsters attributed to multiple
setbacks including the Obamacare problems.
The law requires
insurers to offer a higher level of minimum coverage that includes
maternity care and mental health treatment, among other benefits.
Individuals who do not have policies that meet the new standards may see
their coverage canceled at the end of the year, or may find that the
monthly payments are beyond what they can afford.
Speaking in
Boston, Obama said those who are getting dropped will be able to find
new options through the online insurance exchanges, or marketplaces,
established under the 2010 law.
"Just shop around in the new marketplace," he said. "You're going to get a better deal."
He also stressed that the law allows Americans to keep bare-bones plans
created before the law was signed, as long as insurers did not change
or cancel them.
"Remember, before the Affordable Care Act, these
bad-apple insurers had free rein every single year to limit the care
that you received, or used minor pre-existing conditions to jack up your
premiums, or bill you into bankruptcy," Obama said.
America's
Health Insurance Plans, the national trade group for insurers, when
asked for comment, pointed to its prior fact sheets about which plans
are protected.
"Most policies in the individual market are not
'grandfathered' and therefore have to come into compliance with the ACA
requirements starting on January 1, 2014 or when those policies renew
throughout the year," one document said.
'A BROKEN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM'
The law is the most sweeping new social program since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s.
It is intended to move the United States closer to the goal of
universal care by using market-based mechanisms to deliver affordable
insurance to less affluent families that have been priced out by decades
of rising healthcare costs.
Obama said he would not allow the
country to return to the previous system, which gave insurers wide
latitude to refuse coverage to consumers that they did not deem
profitable.
"I don't think we should go back to the daily
cruelties and indignities and constant insecurity of a broken healthcare
system," he said.
Technical woes, however, have prevented
millions of Americans from exploring those options through the
government's HealthCare.gov portal since it was unveiled.
On
Capitol Hill, Obama's top health official called the debut a "debacle"
as she sought to assure skeptical lawmakers at a congressional hearing
that the administration would eventually get the portal to work
smoothly.
HealthCare.gov was down over the course of the four-hour hearing.
"Hold me accountable for the debacle," Health and Human Services
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the U.S. House of Representatives
Energy and Commerce Committee.
"I told the president that we were ready to go. Clearly I was wrong," she said.
The security of the site was at "high risk" because of a lack of
testing before it opened for enrollment, according to a government
memorandum reviewed by Reuters.
Sebelius said HHS is conducting weekly security tests to ensure visitors are protected.
She has drawn intense criticism from Republicans, who have called for
her or other senior officials to resign. She seemed to survive the
high-profile hearing without further damage. A White House spokesman
said after the hearing that Obama has "complete confidence" in Sebelius.
Republicans have sought to derail the healthcare overhaul since Obama
took office in 2009, culminating in a 16-day government shutdown this
month that has cost the U.S. economy an estimated $24 billion, according
to Standard & Poor's ratings agency. Republicans say the program is
an unwarranted expansion of the federal government.
The website's woes and insurance plan terminations have given Republicans more ammunition.
"For those who lose the coverage they like, they may also be losing
faith in their government," said Michigan Representative Fred Upton, the
Republican who oversaw the hearing.
Several Republican senators
introduced legislation that would allow insurers to sell more plans that
are not compliant with Obamacare. "One of two things is true here -
either President Obama was being dishonest or he was disengaged once
again," Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said at a news
conference.
Despite the drama, the public's assessment of
Obamacare has shifted little over the past months. Gallup reported that
36 percent of Americans believe it will make healthcare in the United
States better, while 44 percent think it will make things worse -
essentially the same as surveys found in August and June.
But the
NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found Obama's rating fell to just 42
percent of Americans approving of his job performance, down 5 percentage
points from earlier this month.
The pollsters attributed the
decline to an accumulation of setbacks including allegations of spying
by the National Security Agency, the recent government shutdown and the
healthcare problems.
GROWING CONCERNS
The growing crisis
surrounding Obama's signature legislative achievement could diminish his
influence in Congress and threaten his other priorities like
immigration reform signed into law in his remaining three years in
office.
U.S. presidents have a limited time to enact their agenda
in the second term before they start losing influence as lawmakers
start worrying about re-election.
Obama spoke at Boston's
historic Faneuil Hall, where in 2006 then-Governor Mitt Romney, a
Republican, signed a state law that served as a model for Obama's health
reforms.
Like Obamacare, that law had a rocky start - state
officials delayed some aspects for several months, and the White House
says only 123 people signed up in the first month it was available. By
the end of the year-long enrollment period, 36,000 had signed up.
The Obama administration likewise expects "a very small number" of
people to sign up initially for coverage, Sebelius said. Overall, U.S.
officials hope 7 million people sign up in the first year.
The
White House has declined to say how many Americans have enrolled so far.
It also has asked states that run their own online healthcare exchanges
to stop releasing their own data, according to Kevin Counihan, who runs
Connecticut's health site.
"The White House is coordinating this
stuff and trying to get states to report when they report — once a
month," Counihan told reporters. "We'll do it every two weeks."
