Q: Thank you, Mr. President.
The combination of the website problems and the concerns over the policy cancellations have crystallized worry within your own party, and polls also show that you’re taking some hit (with the ?) public on both your overall job approval rating and also hunch factors like trust and honesty. Do you feel as though the flawed health care rollout has led to a breach in the public trust and confidence in government? And if so, how do you plan to resolve that?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: There is no doubt that people are frustrated. We just came out of a shutdown and the possibility that for the first time in over 200 years, we wouldn’t pay our bills. And people breathed a sign of relief when that finally got done, and the next thing they know is, is that the president’s health care reform can’t get the website to work and that there are these other problems with respect to cancellation notices.
And, you know, I understand why folks are frustrated. I would be too, because sometimes, you know, people look at what’s taking place in Washington, and they say not enough is getting done that helps me with my life. And, you know, regardless of what Congress does, ultimately, I’m the president of the United States, and they expect me to do something about it.
So in terms of how I intend to approach it, I’m just going to keep on working as hard as I can around the priorities that the American people care about. And I think it’s legitimate for them to expect me to have to win back some credibility on this health care law in particular and on a whole range of these issues in general.
And, you know, that’s on me. I mean, we fumbled the rollout on this health care law. There are a whole bunch of things about it that are working really well which people didn’t notice, all right, because they weren’t controversial, so making sure kids could stay on their parents’ plans till they were — up through the age of 25, and making sure that seniors got more discounts on their prescription drugs — there were a whole bunch of stuff that we did well over the first three years, but we also knew that these marketplaces — creating a place where people can shop and, through competition, get a better deal for the health insurance that their families need — we always knew that that was going to be complicated, and everybody was going to be paying a lot of attention to it.
And we should have done a better job getting that right on day one, not on day 28 or on day 40. I am confident that by — by the time we look back on this next year, that people are going to say, this is working well, and it’s helping a lot of people. But my intention in terms of winning back the confidence of the American people is just to work as hard as I can, identify the problems that we’ve got, make sure that we’re fixing them, whether it’s a website, whether it is making sure that folks who got these cancellation notices get help, we’re just going to keep on chipping away at this until the job is done.
Major Garrett.
Q: Thank you, Mr. President. You say, while the law was being debated, if you like your plan you can keep it. You said, after the law was implemented or signed, if you like your plan you can keep it. Americans believed you, sir, when you said that to them over and over.
Do you not believe, sir, the American people deserve a deeper, more transparent accountability from you as to why you said that over and over when your own statistics published in the Federal Register alerted your policy staff — and, I presume, you — to the fact that millions of Americans would in fact probably fall into the very gap you’re trying to administratively fix now? That’s one question.
Second question. (Laughter.) You were informed or several people in this building were informed two weeks before the launch of the website that it was failing the most basic tests internally; and yet a decision was made to launch the website on October 1st. Did you, sir, make that test (sic)? And if so, did you regret that?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: OK. On the website, I was not informed directly that the website would not be working as — the way it was supposed to. Has I been informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, boy, this is going to be great. You know, I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, this is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity, a week before the website opens, if I thought that it wasn’t going to work.
So, clearly, we and I did not have enough awareness about the problems in the website. Even a week into it, the thinking was that these were some glitches that would be fixed with patches, as opposed to some broader systemic problems that took much longer to fix and we’re still working on them.
So you know, that doesn’t excuse the fact that they just don’t work, but I think it’s fair to say, no, Major, we — we would not have rolled out something knowing very well that it wasn’t going to work the way it was supposed to, given all the scrutiny that we knew was going to be on — on the website.
With respect to the pledge I made that if you like your plan you can keep it, I think — you know, and I’ve said in interviews — that there is no doubt that the way I put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate. It was not because of my intention not to deliver on that commitment and that promise. We put a grandfather clause into the law but it was insufficient.
Keep in mind that the individual market accounts for 5 percent of the population. So when I said you can keep your health care, you know, I’m looking at folks who’ve got employer-based health care. I’m looking at folks who’ve got Medicare and Medicaid. And that accounts for the vast majority of Americans. And then for people who don’t have any health insurance at all, obviously that didn’t apply. My commitment to them was you were going to be able to get affordable health care for the first time.
You have an individual market that accounts for about 5 percent of the population. And our working assumption was — my working assumption was that the majority of those folks would find better policies at lower cost or the same cost in the marketplaces and that there — the universe of folks who potentially would not find a better deal in the marketplaces, the grandfather clause would work sufficiently for them. And it didn’t. And again, that’s on us, which is why we’re — that’s on me.
And that’s why I’m trying to fix it. And as I said earlier, my — I guess last week, and I will repeat, that’s something I deeply regret because it’s scary getting a cancelation notice.
Now, it is important to understand that out of that population, typically, there is constant churn in that market. You know, this market is not very stable and reliable for people. So people have a lot of complaints when they’re in that marketplace. As long as you’re healthy, things seem to be going pretty good. And so a lot of people think, I’ve got pretty good insurance, until they get sick, and then suddenly they look at the fine print and they’ve got a $50,000 out-of- pocket expense that they can’t pay.
We know that on average over the last decade, each year premiums in that individual market would go up an average of 15 percent a year. I know that because when we were talking about health care reform, one of the complaints was, I bought health care in the individual market, and I just got a notice from the insurer they dropped me after I had an illness or my premiums skyrocketed by 20 or 30 percent; why aren’t we doing something about this?
So part of what our goal has been is to make sure that that individual market is stable and fair and has the kind of consumer protections that make sure that people don’t get a rude surprise when they really need health insurance.
But if you just got a cancelation notice and so far you’re thinking, my prices are pretty good, you haven’t been sick, and it fits your budget, and now you get this notice, you’re going to be worried about it. And if the insurer is saying the reason you’re getting this notice is because of the Affordable Care Act, then you’re going to be understandably aggravated about it.
Now, for a big portion of those people, the truth is, they might have gotten a notice saying, we’re jacking up your rates by 30 percent. They might have said, from here on out we’re not going to cover X, Y and Z illnesses. We’re changing the — because these were all 12- month policies. They — the insurance companies were no — under no obligation to renew the exact same policies that you had before.
But look, one of the things I understood when we decided to reform the — the health insurance market, part of the reason why it hasn’t been done before and it’s very difficult to do, is that anything that’s going on that’s tough in — in the health care market, if you initiated a reform, can be attributed to your law. And — and so what we want to do is to be able to say to these folks, you know what, the Affordable Care Act is not going to be the reason why insurers have to cancel your plan. Now, what folks may find is the insurance companies may still come back and say, we want to charge you 20 percent more than we did last year, or we’re not going to cover prescription drugs now. But that will — that’s in the nature of the market that existed earlier.
Q: Did you decide, sir, that the simple declaration was something the American people could handle, but this new honest answer you just gave now was something they couldn’t handle, and you didn’t trust the American people with the fuller truth?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: No. I think, as I said earlier, Major, my expectation was that for 98 percent of the American people, either it genuinely wouldn’t change at all, or they’d be pleasantly surprised with the options in the marketplace and that the grandfather clause would cover the rest. That proved not to be the case. And that’s on me.
And the American people — those who got cancelation notices do deserve and have received an apology from me, but they don’t want just words. What they want is whether we can make sure that they’re in a better place and that we meet that commitment.
And by the way, I think it’s very important for me to note that, you know, there are a whole bunch of folks up in Congress and others who made this statement, and they were entirely sincere about it. And the fact that you’ve got this percentage of people who’ve had this, you know, impact — I want them to know that, you know, their senator or congressman, they were making representations based on what I told them and what this White House and our administrative staff told them, and so it’s not on them, it’s on us. But it is something that we intend to fix.
Steve Carlson (sp).
Q: Do you have reason to believe that Iran would walk away from nuclear talks if Congress draws up new sanctions, and would that — will a diplomatic breakdown (at this stage ?) (leave you ?) no option but military option? And how do you respond to your critics on the Hill who say that it was only tough sanctions that got Iran to the table, and only tougher sanctions will make it capitulate?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, let me make a couple of points. Number one, I’ve said before and I will repeat, we do not want Iran having nuclear weapons. And it would be not only dangerous to us and our allies, but it would be destabilizing to the entire region and could trigger a nuclear arms race that would make life much more dangerous for all of us. So our policy is, Iran cannot have nuclear weapons, and I’m leaving all options on the table to make sure that we meet that goal.
Point number two, the reason we’ve got such vigorous sanctions is because I and my administration put in place when I came into office the international structure to have the most effective sanctions ever.
And so I think it’s fair to say that I know a little bit about sanctions, since we set them up and made sure that we mobilized the entire international community so that there weren’t a lot of loopholes and they really had bite.
And the intention in setting up those sanctions always was to bring the Iranians to the table so that we could resolve this issue peacefully, because that is my preference. That’s my preference because any armed conflict has costs to it, but it’s also my preference because the best way to assure that a country does not have nuclear weapons is that they are making a decision not to have nuclear weapons and we are in a position to verify that they don’t have nuclear weapons.
So as a consequence of the sanctions that we’ve put in place — and I appreciate all the help — bipartisan buy viagra madrid help that we received from Congress in making that happen — Iran’s economy has been crippled. They had a negative 5 percent growth rate last year. Their currency plummeted. They’re having significant problems in just the day-to-day economy on the ground in Iran. And President Rouhani made a decision that he was prepared to come and have a conversation with the international community about what they could do to solve this problem with us.
We’ve now had a series of conversations. And it has never been realistic that we would resolve the entire problem all at once. What we have done is seen the possibility of an agreement in which Iran would halt advances on its program, that it would dilute some of the highly enriched uranium that makes it easier for them to potentially produce a weapon, that they are subjecting themselves to much more vigorous inspections so that we know exactly what they’re doing at all their various facilities, and that that would then provide time and space for us to test, over a certain period of months, whether or not they are prepared to actually resolve this issue to the satisfaction of the international community, making us confident that in fact they’re not pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
In return, the basic structure of what’s been talked about, although not completed, is that we would provide very modest relief at the margins of the sanctions that we’ve set up. But importantly, we would leave in place the core sanctions that are most effective and have the most impact on the Iranian economy — specifically oil sanctions and sanctions with respect to banks and financing.
And what that gives us is the opportunity to test how serious are they, but it also gives us an assurance that if it turns out six months from now that they’re not serious, we can crank — we can dial those sanctions right back up.
So my message to Congress has been that let’s see if this short- term, phase one deal can be completed to our satisfaction where we’re (absolutely/actually ?) certain that while we’re talking with the Iranians, they’re not busy advancing their program.
We can buy some additional months in terms of their breakout capacity.
Let’s test how willing they are to actually resolve this diplomatically and peacefully. We will have lost nothing if at the end of the day it turns out that they are not prepared to provide the international community the hard proof and assurances necessary for us to know that they’re not pursuing a nuclear weapon. And if that’s — turns out to be the case, then not only is our entire sanctions infrastructure still in place, not only are they still losing money from the fact that they can’t sell their oil and get revenue from their oil as easily, even throughout these talks, but other options remain.
But — but what — what I’ve said to members of Congress is that if in fact we’re serious about trying to resolve this diplomatically, because no matter how good our military is, military options are always messy, are always difficult, always have unintended consequences, and in this situation are never complete in terms of making us certain that they don’t then go out and pursue even more vigorously nuclear weapons in the future, if we’re serious about pursuing diplomacy, then there is no need for us to add new sanctions on top of the sanctions that are already very effective and that brought them in table in the first place. Now, if it turns out they can’t deliver, they can’t come to the table in a serious way and get this issue resolved, the sanctions can be ramped back up.
And we’ve got that — we’ve got that option.