Obama Likens Health Care Law To Forcing People to ‘Buy a New Car’ (+video)

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles DharapakBy Melanie Hunter.

President Barack Obama on Thursday compared the grandfather clause in Obamacare to telling people they have to buy a new car right now even if they can’t afford it – when cars were first required to have seat belts or air bags.

“So what we’re saying now is if you’re buying a new car, you’ve got to have a seat belt. Well, the problem with the grandfather clause that we put in place is it’s almost like we said to folks, ‘You gotta buy a new car, even if you can’t afford it right now,’” he said during Thursday’s press conference on how to fix the Affordable Care Act.

“And sooner or later, folks are going to start trading in their old cars, but if their life circumstance is such that for now at least, they want to keep their old car even if the new car is better, we should be able to give them that option, and that’s what we want to do,” Obama said.

According to healthcare.gov, grandfathered health insurance plans “are those that were in existence on March 23, 2010 and haven’t been changed in ways that substantially cut benefits or increase costs for consumers. Insurers must notify customers with these policies that they have a grandfathered plan.”

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Photo Credit: APObama: ‘I Must Win Back Credibility’

By Ben Shapiro.

On Thursday, President Obama took to the White House podium to explain that he would be unilaterally allowing insurance companies to continue selling health insurance plans Americans liked and wanted to keep. Obamacare has already wiped away those plans, and will undoubtedly drive up rates in both the now-broken individual market and the high-risk pool of people likely to enter the Obamacare exchanges.

President Obama was half an hour late to his press conference, which was supposed to begin at 11:35 a.m. ET. During his comments, he never called Obamacare by that name; instead, he reverted to terming it the Affordable Care Act. “Today I want to update the American people on our efforts to implement and improve the Affordable Care Act,” Obama said.

From there, Obama turned to the horrendously low Obamacare enrollment numbers. He noted that 106,000 Americans had selected a health insurance plan. “Is that as high a number as we’d like?” Obama said. “Absolutely not. But it does mean that people want affordable healthcare.” After blaming the website again, Obama said, “there’s no question that there’s real demand for quality affordable health insurance.”

Later, when asked by National Journal’s Major Garrett why he had continued to pump the website just one week before launch, and whether he had been informed about the technical problems, President Obama claimed ignorance. “I was not informed directly that the website was not working,” Obama said. “If I’d been informed, I wouldn’t have gone out and said ‘The website is going to be great.’” He added, “I don’t think I’m stupid enough” to compare the website to Amazon or Travelocity knowing it would fail.

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