Again proving himself both a campaign asset and liability, Bill Clinton muddled his wife's healthcare message and emboldened Affordable Care Act critics Monday when he described one of the law's affordability problems as “the craziest thing in the world.”
The former president, after stirring controversy with his remarks Monday in Michigan, toned down his Obamacare criticisms on Tuesday by stressing the need for a public health plan option to compete with private insurers to keep premiums down. This played out as President Barack Obama planned to speak in Florida about the benefits of his healthcare reform law (the speech was cancelled due to Hurricane Matthew) to counter campaign attacks by Republicans, who are hammering away at the big 2017 premium increases for individual-market plans.
In a campaign speech Monday for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, the former president said that while the ACA has been “a remarkable success for 25 million people and for getting rid of pre-existing conditions,” people who earn too much to qualify for premium subsidies “wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.”
“Why? Because they're not organized, they don't have any bargaining power with insurance companies, and they're getting whacked.”
His comments were more or less consistent with his wife's proposals to offer additional tax credits for healthcare costs and establish out-of-pocket spending caps for prescription drugs. But while Hillary Clinton repeatedly has said she wants to strengthen the ACA, her husband's comments almost sounded like he wanted to throw the law out and start over.
ACA supporters were surprised and dismayed by the comments of the former president, who has alternatively praised Obamacare and raised issues about it in the past. The Clinton administration failed in its attempt to pass universal coverage legislation in the 1990s.
“I don't think his remarks are helpful in clarifying (Hillary's) position and that it might be wise for her to clarify it further,” said Tim Jost, an emeritus law professor at Washington and Lee University who supports the ACA. “I don't think Bill Clinton is very well-informed as to what is in fact going on and is trying to support his wife's proposals without really understanding them or the issues they are intended to address.”
Harold Pollack, a health policy expert at the University of Chicago, was a little less alarmed. “When I heard the one sentence, I thought, 'Ugh, this is a gaffe,' ” he said. “But when I heard Clinton's full statement, I realized his comments were … well-taken in the proper context despite the rather politically maladroit sound bite.”
Hillary Clinton's proposals to expand the ACA's premium subsidies to more Americans, allow a public health plan option and let people over 50 voluntarily buy in to Medicare would help solve the affordability problems her husband raised, Pollack said.
Nevertheless, ACA opponents were delighted with Bill Clinton's comments. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona told Fox News that “the whole thing is collapsing like a house of cards… If anything is clear about this failed law, it's that more government intervention is the wrong solution to fixing our healthcare system.”
But Jost argued that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's proposal to repeal the ACA “would hurt far more people than have been disadvantaged by the ACA, and far more dramatically.”
