The administration is seeking to prevent a swell of Democratic defections in the House. Obama fix: Keep plans

President Barack Obama gave a rare and extensive “mea culpa” news conference Thursday on the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, as he repeatedly conceded that he and his administration had made mistakes in implementing key pieces of his signature policy achievement.

“We fumbled the rollout on this health care law,” Obama said.


“I’m very frustrated,” he said during the news conference lasted almost an hour, “but I’m also somebody who, if I fumble the ball, you know, I’m going to wait until I get the next play, and then I’m going to try to run as hard as I can and do right by the team. So, you know, ultimately I’m the head of this team. We did fumble the ball on it. And what I’m going to do is make sure that we get it fixed.”

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The president sought to do damage control in responding to problems with HealthCare.gov — and the low level of October insurance signups — and offered a proposal aimed at making it easier for Americans whose health insurance plans were slated to be cancelled at the end of the year to keep the same coverage through 2014.

Obama’s fix is an attempt to head off a mounting push from moderate and red state Democrats who are threatening to attempt an end-around the White House on health care. It’s also a response to the reaction to his repeated claims that people would be allowed to keep their current health care plans.

For those who have been told their plans are being cancelled, “I completely get how upsetting this can be … I hear you loud and clear,” he said, before laying out his proposal, which allows insurers to “extend plans that would otherwise cancelled be into 2014.”

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The fix “won’t solve every problem for every person, but it’s going to help a lot of people,” he said, adding he’s also open to working with Congress to make other fixes.

Obama was reluctant to acknowledge polling that shows Americans’ trust in him waning, instead saying that he’d also be “frustrated” if watching the rollout from afar. He did, though, concede that the past few weeks have been tough on his political allies on Capitol Hill.

“There is no doubt that our failure to roll out the ACA smoothly has put a burden on Democrats, whether they’re running or not” in 2014, he said.

While Obama was apologetic and placed blame on himself as the “head of the team” for “not having executed better,” he made clear that he operated with limited information, at least when it came to HealthCare.gov’s launch.

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“I was not informed directly” of the site’s problems, Obama said, and, had he known, he wouldn’t have been “stupid enough to say this is going to be as easy as shopping around on Amazon or Travelocity.”

Facing a growing rebellion from members of his own party, Obama chose to put the onus back on insurance companies by encouraging them to reinstate plans that they had already told customers they planned to cancel heading into 2014.

The law includes a provision allowing people who, at the time of its passage, had coverage that did not meet the law’s standards to keep their plans, assuming they hadn’t changed plans or seen their plans cancelled since 2010. The proposed fix is “an expansion of the grandfathering principle,” a senior administration official said, allowing insurance companies to retract cancellation notices and provide those cancelled plans for an additional year.

Insurers can re-enroll only those whose plans were slated to be cancelled, and not take in new customers, as Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) has proposed in a bill slated for a Friday floor vote. The Upton bill “would undermine the Affordable Care Act and the marketplaces,” the senior administration official said, while Obama’s plan is aimed at giving consumers “more information, additional choices including keeping their own plans.”

The Department of Health and Human Services will reach out to state insurance commissioners on Thursday and tell them that, in order to ensure a “smooth transition,” insurance companies serving the individual and small-group markets can reintroduce the plans they’d intended to cancel, another senior administration official said.

Insurers, meanwhile, will be informed that they have the option of choosing to reach out to consumers whose plans have been cancelled and offer to provide them for an additional year. Risk pools would be adjusted to offset the change.

The insurance industry responded with concern about the president’s idea.

“Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the law could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumer,” said Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans. “Premiums have already been set for next year based on an assumption of when consumers will be transitioning to the new marketplace. If now fewer younger and healthier people choose to purchase coverage in the exchange, premiums will increase and there will be fewer choices for consumers. Additional steps must be taken to stabilize the marketplace and mitigate the adverse impact on consumers.”

On the Hill, meanwhile, Democrats are still planning their own responses.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that congressional Democrats are hoping to vote on their own plan to address the mass health insurance cancellations associated with Obamacare. She called it a “belt and suspenders” approach that would reinforce, but is not intended to compete with the administrative fix announced by the president.

Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) have introduced bills that would allow people to keep their health plans if insurers cancel them — an attempt to codify a repeated vow of Obama’s that “if you like your health care, you can keep it” under Obamacare, and Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) — a cosponsor of Landrieu’s bill — told CNN during the president’s speech that she would continue to support the measure since it would extend beyond 2014.

The administration is also seeking to prevent a swell of Democratic defections when the House votes Friday on the Upton bill, which House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has acknowledged is a step toward repealing the ACA.

“The only way to fully protect the American people is to scrap this law once and for all. There’s no way to fix this,” Boehner said just before Obama spoke, as details of the president’s fix were widely reported. “I’m highly skeptical they can do this administratively.”

Though there will be relief among some Democrats that the White House has offered a solution, even the rollout of the fix has been bumpy. Senate leaders weren’t even briefed on what the fix will entail ahead of time, sources said.

“Yes, one is coming,” said one exasperated aide about a proposed fix. “You’d think they’d want to tell us first.”

House Democrats will get their briefing hours after the president’s speech, as White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, health policy adviser Chris Jennings and Mike Hash, the director of the HHS Office of Health Reform, head to a meeting of the caucus on Thursday afternoon.

Jennifer Haberkorn, Jose DelReal and Burgess Everett contributed to this report.