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Watch Nancy Pelosi Struggle To Defend Obama's Promise That People Could Keep Their Health Insurance

Danny Vinik   

Watch Nancy Pelosi Struggle To Defend Obama's Promise That People Could Keep Their Health Insurance
Politics1 min read

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) joined David Gregory on Meet The Press this morning and attempted to justify President Obama's line that "if you like your plan, you can keep it." Despite the fact that millions of Americans are receiving cancellation notices, Pelosi has refused to admit that the president's promise has not come true.

"Are you accountable for saying something that turned out not to be correct," Gregory asked.

"It's not that it's not correct, it's that if you want to keep," Pelosi responded, " It's important that the insurance companies to say to people this is what your plan does. It doesn't prevent you from being discriminated against on the basis of pre-existing conditions. It doesn't prevent lifetime limits, annual limits"

Gregory continued to pressure her about the minimum standards that Obamacare requires.

"If you had your plan before the enactment of the law in 2010, there is nothing in the law says you have to [change it]," Pelosi answered.

This is the line that Obama used when Americans first received their cancellation notices, but has since given up on. The Affordable Care Act grandfathers in all insurance plans before the law passed in 2010, but insurers are only allowed to make minimum changes to those plans to keep that status. Otherwise, they are required to meet the consumer protection regulations in the law. Given the notable yearly change in insurance coverage, this effectively guaranteed that insurers would cancel millions of plans.

This past week Obama took executive action to extend that grandfather clause to plans offered this year so that insurers can continue to offer plans to current beneficiaries that do not meet those minimum requirements. Insurance regulators and insurers still have the choice to continue offering those plans and many Americans will still find themselves holding cancellation notices.

Here's Pelosi on Meet The Press:

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