Bill Clinton: Obama should honor health care pledge

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Adding pressure to fix the administration’s problem-plagued health care program, former President Bill Clinton says President Barack Obama should find a way to let people keep their health coverage, even if it means changing the law.

Clinton says Obama should “honor the commitment that the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got.”

The former president, a Democrat who has helped Obama promote the 3-year-old health law, becomes the latest in Obama’s party to urge the president to live up to a promise he made repeatedly, declaring that if Americans liked their health care coverage, they would be able to keep it under the new law.

Instead, millions of Americans have started receiving insurance cancellation letters. That, coupled with the troubled launch of the health care law’s enrollment website, has prompted Republican critics and frustrated Democrats to seek corrections in the law.

House Republicans have drafted legislation to give consumers the opportunity to keep their coverage. Ten Senate Democrats are pushing for an unspecified extension of the sign-up period, and in a private White House meeting last week, several pressed Obama to do so. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., has proposed legislation that would require insurance companies to reinstate the canceled policies.

The White House says it is working on changes that would ease the impact of the cancellations for some people. But the fixes under consideration are administrative actions, not congressional changes to the law.