US President Barack Obama Thursday said insurance companies can extend for one year the health insurance plans for Americans whose policies would be otherwise cancelled due to the implementation of his signature health care overhaul.
Obama offered the solution to Americans who could be affected by the cancelled insurance plans at a news briefing held at the White House Thursday, Xinhua reported.
The Obama administration has been under fire following reports that many Americans, who buy insurance on their own, have received cancellation notices from insurers or are at risk of being forced off their current plans that do not meet the new standards of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
Obama said he is "deeply responsible" for making it harder for those Americans affected by the problem.
Obama has repeated his assurances that "if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan" with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the country's largest health care reform in decades.
In the televised news briefing, Obama also noted that the newly released first-month enrolment numbers concerning the online insurance marketplace are "absolutely not" what he is happy about.
He expressed his frustration by saying "we fumbled the roll-out" of the healthcare insurance exchange, an online insurance marketplace that has served as the centerpiece of the reform but been wrought with problems since its debut Oct 1.
Federal officials announced Wednesday that only about 106,000 people signed up for coverage in the error-ridden online marketplace under the Obamacare in its first month. The figure is well below the administration's expectations to enroll 500,000 people by the end of October.
The flawed website of the Obamacare has undergone failures since its debut Oct 1 and was almost out of service during the first two weeks of operation. Many consumers have reported difficulties of signing up and getting enrolled. The Obama administration has vowed to fix the broken website by the end of this month.
The federal government's health care team has been working around-the-clock to fix the online health care marketplace, which aims at getting millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans enrolled for health care coverage.
