Bill Clinton says Obama should honor health care pledge

FILE - In this Oct. 30, 2013 file photo, former President Bill Clinton speaks in Charlottesville, Va. (Steve Helber, AP Photo File)

WASHINGTON Adding pressure to fix the administration's problem-plagued health care program, former President Bill Clinton said President Barack Obama should accept changes to his health care law if that's what it takes to fulfill his promise that Americans who like their health insurance can keep it.

"Even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they've got," Clinton said in an interview posted Tuesday by Ozy.com, a media startup backed by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs.

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The former president, a Democrat who has helped Obama promote the 3-year-old health law, becomes the latest in Obama's party to urge the president to live up to a promise he made repeatedly, declaring that the if Americans liked their health care coverage, they would be able to keep it under the new law.

Republicans seized on Clinton's remarks. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said the comments "signify a growing recognition that Americans were misled when they were promised that they could keep their coverage under President Obama's health care law."

While Clinton generally praised the health care law, Boehner called it "a train wreck that needs to go."

Meanwhile, software problems with the federal online health insurance exchange, especially in handling high volumes, are proving so stubborn that the system is unlikely to work fully by the end of the month as the White House has promised, an official with knowledge of the project told The Washington Post.

The exchange is balking when more than 20,000 to 30,000 people attempt to use it at the same time about half its intended capacity, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal information. And the main contractor who built the site, CGI Federal, has been able to fix only about six of every 10 defects.

Government workers and technical contractors racing to repair the website have concluded, the official said, that the only way for large numbers of Americans to enroll in the health care plans soon is by using other means so that the online system isn't overburdened.

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Bill Clinton says Obama should honor health care pledge

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