Politics

Bill Maher Turns On Obamacare? ‘It’s More Expensive, Too Confusing’

Jamie Weinstein Senior Writer
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Liberal comedian Bill Maher, a longtime champion of Obamacare, began to change his tune on President Obama’s signature legislation Friday night.

“Obamacare: You know it’s the signature achievement of obviously this president and like many liberals I’ve been screaming how great it has been and ‘it’s working’ and ‘there’s no doubt,'” Maher said on his HBO show “Real Time.”

Though Maher said he still thinks that Obamacare has been good for those with preexisting conditions and for those who were able to get insurance because of the bill, he is no longer sure Obamacare has been so grand overall.

“But The New York Times on Sunday did an article that basically said, you know, when Obama said if you like your plan nothing will change — well, everything has changed,” Maher said. “46 percent of people are having trouble paying health care costs now, up 10 percent from a year ago because the deductibles went the up, the co-pays went up. They can’t see the doctor they used to see because he’s in a different network. They go to get questions answered and they’re talking to somebody reading a script in the Philippines. It’s like your prostate cancer is being handled by Comcast now.”

“The most frightening thing in this article is when somebody said ‘it’s so confusing, I’ve just stopped seeing a doctor’ — and that’s going on a lot, apparently,” Maher later added. “People are just not going because it’s more expensive, too confusing and I think this was intentional. I think the insurance companies wanted this to happen because that’s how they make money. ”

But Maher isn’t quite warming to conservative alternatives just because he is having second thoughts about the success of Obamacare.

“We should have a single payer system,” he said.

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