Biden Releases Plans for Healthcare, Echos Obama’s Infamous “If You Like Your Health Plan, You Can Keep It” Pledge

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Former Vice President Joe Biden and current front-runner released an outline of his proposed approach to the nation’s healthcare system echoing the infamous words of former President Obama by saying that, under his proposal, If you like your health care plan…you can keep it. File photo: C-SPAN.

WASHINGTON – Former Vice President Joe Biden, the current front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, this week released an outline of his proposed approach to the nation’s healthcare system.

However, some were left with concerns when he chose to do so by echoing the infamous words of former President Barack Obama by saying that, under his proposal, “If you like your health care plan…you can keep it.”

During his time in office, President Obama made the exact same promise multiple times in regards to the Affordable Care Act – nicknamed Obamacare – but was soon proven wrong when health plan cancellation letters went out to millions of Americans.

PolitiFact actually named the quote “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it” their “Lie of the Year” for 2013, a dubious distinction that President Obama issued a rare presidential apology for. 

That being the case, it is perplexing that Biden would choose these same maligned words – however benign their intentions – to describe his own take on health care, which he said would include subsidies to lower prices on the health plan exchanges in addition to allowing for a “public option” similar to how Medicare functions. 

“If you like your health care plan, your employer-based plan, you can keep it. If, in fact, you have private insurance, you can keep it,” Biden said at a public forum this week. “You can stay with your employer-based plan, or you can move on. I think it’s the quickest, most reasonable, rational and best way to get to universal coverage.”

Many of the other Democrats vying for the 2020 nomination, including Senator Bernie Sanders, have been pushing for a single-payer health care system, which has been dubbed “Medicare for All.”

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