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In response to
"Well, Obama just said some people were being "grossly misleading" about ACA. That will go over well. (waiting for full in context transcript) -- nm"
by
ty97
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Here's the transcript excerpt. This is how Obama is responding to 'if you like your plan, you can keep it'
Posted by
ty97
Oct 30 '13, 13:54
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"PRESIDENT OBAMA: Because of the tax credits that we're offering and the competition between insurers, most people are going to be able to get better, comprehensive health care plans for the same price or even cheaper than projected. You're going to get a better deal.
Now, there's a fraction of Americans with higher incomes who will pay more on the front end for better insurance with better benefits and protections like the patient's bill of rights, and that will actually save them from financial ruin if they get sick. But nobody is losing their right to health care coverage. And no insurance company will ever be able to deny you coverage or drop you as a customer altogether. Those days are over, and that's the truth. That is the truth. (Cheers, applause.)
So for people without health insurance, they're finally going to be able to get it. For the vast majority of people who have health insurance that works, you can keep it. For the fewer than 5 percent of Americans who buy insurance on your own, you will be getting a better deal. So anyone peddling the notion that insurers are canceling peoples' plan without mentioning that almost all the insurers are encouraging people to join better plans with the same carrier and stronger benefits and stronger protections while others will be able to get better plans with new carriers through the marketplace, and that many will get new help to pay for these better plans and make them actually cheaper -- if you leave that stuff out, you're being grossly misleading, to say the least. (Applause.)
But frankly, look -- you saw this in Massachusetts. This is one of the challenges of health care reform. Health care is complicated, and it's very personal. And it's easy to scare folks. And it's no surprise that some of the same folks trying to scare people now are the same folks who have been trying to sink the Affordable Care Act from the beginning. (Applause.)
(Cheers, applause.)
So -- so yes, this is hard because the health care system is a big system, and it's complicated. And if it was hard doing it just in one state, it's harder to do it in all 50 states, especially when the governors of a bunch of states and half of the Congress aren't trying to help. Yeah, it's hard.
But it's worth it. It is the right thing to do. (Cheers, applause.) And we're going to keep forward. We are going to keep working to improve the law just like you did here in Massachusetts. (Sustained cheers and applause.) We are just going to keep on working at it. We're going to grind it out, just like you did here in Massachusetts -- and by the way, just like we did when the prescription drug program for seniors know -- known as Medicare Part D was passed by a Republican president a decade ago.
That -- that health care law had some early challenges as well. There were even problems with the website. (Laughter.) And Democrats weren't happy with a lot of the aspects of the law because in part it added hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit, it wasn't paid for, unlike the Affordable Care Act, which will actually help lower the deficit. (Cheers, applause.)
But you know what, once it was the law, everybody pitched in to try to make it work. Democrats weren't about to punish millions of seniors just to try to make a point or settle a score. So Democrats worked with Republicans to make it work.
And I'm proud of Democrats for having done that. It was the right thing to do, because now -- (applause) -- because now about 90 percent of seniors like what they have. They've gotten a better deal.
Both parties working together to get the job done -- that's what we need in Washington right now. (Cheers, applause.) That's what we need in Washington right now. You know, if Republicans in Congress were as eager to help Americans get covered as some Republican governors have shown themselves to be, we'd make a lot of progress. I'm not asking them to agree with me on everything. But if they'd work with us like Mitt Romney did working with Democrats in Massachusetts or like Ted Kennedy often did with Republicans in Congress, including on the prescription drug bill, we'd be a lot further along."
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