Bill Clinton: Obama should change law to let people keep health plans

NEW YORK, Nov. 12 (UPI) -- President Obama should keep his promise about the healthcare law and allow people to keep their existing plans, former President Bill Clinton said.

"I personally believe, even if it takes a change in the law, that the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they've got," Clinton said in an interview with OZY.com released Tuesday.

Despite problems with the law and its implementation, Clinton said the United States was better off with the law than without out it.

He compared problems with the healthcare website to those encountered by the Bush administration when it introduced the Medicate drug benefit in 2006. While the rollout was a "disaster," Clinton said, in time those problems were fixed.

Republican governors who opted out of the law's Medicaid provisions are going to be in an odd situation that will eventually stress hospital emergency rooms, Clinton said. Individuals with incomes between 133 percent and 400 percent of the poverty level will be able to buy insurance at lower premiums, he said, while people with incomes below 133 percent of the poverty level won't have any coverage, pushing them into emergency rooms for medical care.

Those states will eventually rethink their position and join the program, he said.

Obama has apologized to the millions of Americans who have been notified their policies are being canceled because their plans don't meet the minimum standards of the law, The Hill reported.

He said he was looking into "what we can do to close some of the holes and gaps in the law."