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Obama Compares Obamacare To Phones That Literally Explode

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Robert Donachie Capitol Hill and Health Care Reporter
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President Barack Obama compared Obamacare to phones that literally burst into flames at a Thursday speech at Miami Dade College.

Touting his landmark healthcare bill to a crowd of thousands, Obama said: “The problems that may have arisen from the Affordable Care Act is not because government is too involved in the process.  The problem is, is that we have not reached everybody and pulled them in. When one of these companies comes out with a new smartphone and it had a few bugs, what do they do?  They fix it.  They upgrade — unless it catches fire, and they just — (laughter) — then they pull it off the market.”

“You don’t go back to using a rotary phone.  (Laughter.)  You don’t say, well, we’re repealing smartphones — we’re just going to do the dial-up thing.  (Laughter.)  That’s not what you do,” Obama continued.

The president is alluding to the Samsung Galaxy Note7, which announced a global recall on Oct. 13 following reports that their Note7 model phones were bursting into flame.

The analogy of an exploding phone is an interesting choice of words for the commander-in-chief to employ, because his prized healthcare legislation seems, much like the Note7, to be imploding nationwide.

Obamacare is in the midst of a death spiral: 17 co-ops have failed, the Tennessee Health Commissioner says the healthcare exchanges in the state are “very near collapse,” insurance companies in North Carolina have become a “financial sinkhole,” and few health experts have positive things to say about the future of the legislation. (RELATED: Obamacare ‘Very Near Collapse,’ In Tennesee, Says Insurance Regulator)

Even more interesting is the fact that this is not the first time the president used the analogy of a failing phone to Obamacare. President Obama compared the defective Healthcare.gov website to the lackluster Apple iOS7 software in 2013.

“Like every new law, every new product rollout, there are going to be some glitches in the sign-up process along the way that we will fix. Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system, and within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it,” Obama said.

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