Outspoken liberal filmmaker Michael Moore is less than thrilled with the Affordable Care Act, calling it “awful” and bashing President Obama for creating a healthcare system that funnels money to the insurance industry.
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The long-time Democratic supporter, who called Obama’s first term “heartbreaking,” slammed the President’s signature law in an op-ed in The New York Times on Thursday. Moore advocated for “universal quality healthcare,” but criticized President Obama for implementing a healthcare system that pumps money into the private insurance industry.
“Now that the individual mandate is officially here, let me begin with an admission: Obamacare is awful,” Moore wrote. “That is the dirty little secret many liberals have avoided saying out loud for fear of aiding the president’s enemies, at a time when the ideal of universal health care needed all the support it could get.”
In addressing the disastrous roll out of the Affordable Care Act — which included a glitch-filled federal exchange website and millions receiving cancellation notices from insurance companies — Moore attributed the rocky implantation to one “fatal flaw.”
“The Affordable Care Act is a pro-insurance-industry plan implemented by a president who knew in his heart that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go,” he said. “When right-wing critics ‘expose’ the fact that President Obama endorsed a single-payer system before 2004, they’re actually telling the truth.”
Moore did, however, offer high praise for the law, calling it a “godsend” for helping a friend who was diagnosed with cancer. Obamacare, he wrote, protected his friend from being virtually uninsurable because of pre-existing conditions. Additionally, the law, he said, cut her premium in half.
But he did note the lack of affordability in the Affordable Care Act, and calls it a “cruel joke.”
Instead of advocating for a health insurance system created under Obamacare, the filmmaker advocated for Medicaid expansion for those living in red states and a public option on the insurance exchanges for blue states.
“Let’s not take a victory lap yet, but build on what there is to get what we deserve: universal quality health care,” he wrote.
And in a call to action, Moore noted that Obamacare must be changed by the very citizens it affects, not from Washington.
“So let’s get started,” he wrote. “Obamacare can’t be fixed by its namesake. It’s up to us to make it happen.”
