Bill Clinton lambasted President Barack Obama’s signature law as ‘the craziest thing in the world’ on Monday.
The poor and the elderly are getting a good deal, the former Oval Office occupant said of Obamacare.
‘The people who 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,’ he contended.
The ex-president was campaigning in Flint, Michigan, for his wife when he tore down Obama’a health care law.
‘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 and it’s the craziest thing in the world,’ Clinton said.
Hillary Clinton wants to expand Medicaid and Medicare. Under the current system, retirees become eligible for federally-funded health care when they turn 65.
The Democratic presidential nominee says she wants to amend the program to allow Americans that are 10 years younger voluntarily participate.
She was caught saying at a fundraiser that Obamacare ‘has done a lot of good, but I’m gonna fix some of the things that need fixing. It’s like any other new program.’
‘We’ve got to make it work even better,’ she said in leaked audio, released this week by hackers.
In the Democratic primary Clinton assailed her opponent for proposing a Medicare-for-all program she said would significantly increase middle class Americans’ tax burden.
They announced a truce in July, with Clinton proposing an additional $40 billion in funding the program over the next 10 years.
She also threw her support behind the creation of a ‘public option’ plan that would make the government an insurer in addition to private companies competing on the federal marketplace.
‘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,’ Bill Clinton asserted in his Monday speech.
The explainer-in-chief said too many Americans are being left in the cold.
The White House says Obama is open to changes to the law that would ‘strengthen’ it.
His spokesman said Monday that Obama will, however, resist efforts from Republicans ‘trying to tear down that law’.
Donald Trump has pledged to entirely abolish the Affordable Care Act, in common with the Republicans’ plan in Congress.
Bill Clinton’s attack on Obamacare came at the start of a bus tour which is to go to Ohio.
It is designed to shore up support for his wife, who has been consistently behind in the polls in the state, which has been a must-win for the victor in every presidential election since 1964.
The ex-president had until now been largely kept on the sidelines of his wife’s campaign, but is seen as able to reach the white male voters she is struggling to engage.
However his attack on Obamacare may trigger concern in his wife’s campaign.
Although initially she had intended to keep her distance from Obama to avoid being seen as seeking a third term to his two, in recent weeks she has embraced his support and proclaimed herself as running as his heir.
Any suggestion of a re-appearance of the sort of tension between her husband and Obama which happened in the final weeks of her failed 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination would be a distraction from her current strategy.
In 2008 Bill was a high-profile advocate for his wife but made a series of attacks on Obama, one of which was criticized as being racially loaded.
He said of Obama’s performance in South Carolina: ‘Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in ’84 and ’88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here.’
Via Daily Mail
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