President Barack Obama told The Economist magazine in an interview that “of course” his signature healthcare law, Obamacare, could’ve been written better.
From the interview’s transcript, which The Economist “lightly edited for clarity” (emphasis mine):
The Economist: When you look at things like Dodd-Frank and health-care reform — both of which we supported in principle — that they could have been much simpler?
Mr Obama: Of course. This goes back to the old adage of Churchill — democracy is the worst form of government except for all the alternatives. (Laughter.) It’s messy. And so could we have designed a far more elegant health-care law? Of course.
The president’s statement comes amid an ongoing judicial battle over the law’s wording that has seen one court rule that individuals who enrolled on the federal exchange are not eligible for Obamacare subsidies. The debate about the meaning of the law’s exact text — that subsidies apply to “a qualified health plan … that was enrolled in through an Exchange established by the State” — has sparked criticism, humorously from the left this time, that the law was poorly (read: carelessly) written. That conservatives have leveled the same charge against the law, though for entirely different and more numerous reasons, underscores a longstanding critique that Obamacare was terribly crafted and rushed.
“[M]y belief is that if, in fact, we can see a reduction in some of the political temperature around Obamacare … then it’s an iterative process. We can go back at it and further refine it, learn lessons from things that aren’t working as well, make it simpler, make it better,” Obama added in the interview. “That does require, though, an attitude on the part of Congress, as well as on the part of the business community, that says you don’t just get 100 [percent] of what you want.”
Obama has said before that the law “is not perfect,” though he hedged by blaming the implementation, in particular the rollout of Healthcare.gov.
The president also went after what he termed “climate-change denialists” in the sit-down with The Economist, which took place on Air Force One and mostly covered foreign policy and economics.
