Michael Bloomberg Called Obamacare A ‘Disgrace’
Back in 2010, Michael Bloomberg said the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s biggest legislative achievement, does "absolutely nothing to fix the big health care problems" and called the program "a disgrace."
The comments were made during a speech the former New York City mayor gave in July of that year at Dartmouth College, adding that the law was just "another program that's going to cost a lot more money."
CNN discovered the comments that came just months after the landmark bill was passed. Bloomberg, who is now seeking the Democratic nomination for president, also called the ACA “really dysfunctional” and said it did nothing to solve rising healthcare costs.
Now, Bloomberg is apparently behind Obamacare and has proposed a “Medicare-like public option” that builds on the ACA.
Bloomberg, a former Republican turned Independent turned Democrat, was the mayor of New York at the time of his remarks.
Here’s what Mayor Bloomberg said in full about the ACA during the Dartmouth speech: “We passed a health care bill that does absolutely nothing to fix the big health care problems in this country. It is just a disgrace," said Bloomberg at the Dartmouth Presidential Lecture in 2010. "The President, in all fairness, started out by pointing out what the big problems were, but then turned it over to Congress, which didn't pay any attention to any of those big problems and just created another program that's going to cost a lot of money."
He continued: "It's really sad because they say they've insured or provided coverage for another 45 million people. Except there's no doctors for 45 million more people and unless they fix immigration and let people who come here for medical education stay here, those people are just going to do the same thing. They're going to have to go to the emergency rooms where they've been except that now it's going to cost a lot more money."
