Bill Clinton slammed President Barack Obama’s signature law while he was stumping for his wife, Hillary Clinton.
He described the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, as “the craziest thing in the world,” saying the law flooded the health care insurance market and causing the premiums for middle-class Americans to rise.
“So you’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It’s the craziest thing in the world,” Clinton said in remarks delivered in Flint, Michigan, according to CNN.
Obamacare’s “insurance model doesn’t work here,” he added.
In the early 1990s, Clinton attempted to overhaul the American health care system before it was blocked in Congress.
“On the other hand, the current system works fine if you’re eligible for Medicaid, if you’re a lower-income working person; if you’re already on Medicare, or if you get enough subsidies on a modest income that you can afford your health care,” Clinton told a crowd. “But the people that are getting killed in this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies.”
Clinton’s comments were immediately used by the Republican National Committee, who uploaded videos of his remarks.
In an interview published in New York Magazine this week, Obama said the law has “real problems” that have been exacerbated by Congressional gridlock.
The law has been under duress after health insurance companies left government-run marketplaces, or exchanges.
“They’re eminently fixable problems in terms of strengthening the marketplace, improving the subsidies so more folks can get it, making sure everybody has Medicaid who was qualified under the original legislation, doing more on the cost containment,” Obama said. “But you hit a point where if Congress just is not willing to make any constructive modifications and it’s all political football, then you’re getting a suboptimal solution.”
