President Obama Explains the ACA in Retrospect and More

President Obama Explains the ACA on Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

Following a petition request with 320,000 signatures on Whitehouse.gov, President Obama appeared in an interview with Bill Maher in which he discussed his Presidency and the ACA in retrospect, among other things.

In the interview, President explains how in a perfect world he might have pushed for a single payer program or a bolder reform package, but explains how the ACA instead sought to build on and change the “legacy system” already in place.

He noted that the healthcare system is a 1.3 trillion dollar system, and a clear sweep would have meant factoring in all the jobs and wealth that would have been in jeopardy if we had just made the leap to single payer out of the gate. Instead of seeing the ACA as a final destination, he sees it as a stepping stone to the future of healthcare reform.

Centered and rational truisms like this, and insight into how the President feels about other aspects of American life, can be found in the interview presented below.

TIP: To hear what the President thinks about the ACA in retrospect in detail, see The ACA and the Future of US Health Care (a link that contains his JAMA article and the response articles).