The White House on Tuesday defended President Barack Obama’s earlier assertion that the none of the warnings about Obamacare have come to pass — including the one that Americans could lose their current insurance or lose their doctor.
Obama vowed repeatedly during the height of the Obamacare battle that "if you like your health care plan" and if you like your doctor you can keep them, both of which turned out not to be true for all Americans. Asked if it’s true that none of the warnings came to pass, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said those were problems well before Obamacare became law.
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
“That was a circumstance in the health care market before the Affordable Care Act,” Earnest told TheBlaze. “The fact is there are a lot of people that had to change their health care plan because they got sick and their health care plan had to drop them. No longer can health care plans do that because of the Affordable Care Act. And I think that is a testament to the power of this law and the positive impact that it has had on people across the country.”
Obama told the Catholic Hospitals Association earlier Tuesday: "Despite the constant doom-and-gloom predictions, the unending Chicken Little warnings that somehow making health insurance fairer and easier to buy would lead to the end of freedom, the end of the American way of life -- lo and behold, it did not happen. None of this came to pass. In fact, in a lot of ways, the Affordable Care Act worked out better than some of us anticipated."
Politifact pointed out that 4 million people lost their health insurance plans after Obamcare went into effect in 2013, and ranked the president’s assurances otherwise the “Lie of the Year.”
CBS News reported in December about the growing number of Americans who have to find a new doctor because of changes in the insurance market.
The White House is preparing for the Supreme Court's upcoming ruling that could potentially unravel a key element of the Affordable Care Act. The justices will decide in the case of King v. Burwell if subsidies will go to residents in 37 states that do not have state-established Obamacare insurance exchanges.
