Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday blasted President Barack Obama for not telling Americans "the truth" about how his signature healthcare law would affect their existing insurance plans.
Although CBS News reported that 800,000 New Jersey residents lost their current plans as a result of Obamacare, Christie said he didn't regret opting not to set up a state-run exchange where people could buy insurance under the law.
"It wouldn't have made any difference, in fact, because you can see all the problems with this," Christie said in an interview on CBS This Morning, according to a
transcript published by Real Clear Politics.
"What the federal government wanted us to do in the states was to take on this burden ourselves without telling us how much it would cost or what authority we would have to actually run our exchanges. That's why myself and 33 other governors, both Republican and Democrat, said no to a state-run exchange.
"The real problem is that people weren't told the truth," Christie said.
"You can remember they were told that they would be able to keep their policies if they like them, and now you hear hundreds of thousands of people across the country being told they couldn't," he said. "So, the White House needs to square that with what was told to the American people and told to the Congress beforehand, and it doesn't seem to square at the moment, but we'll wait and see."
On Monday, NBC News reported the administration knew that about 50 percent — or as many as 80 percent — of those with individual insurance policies could expect to be canceled largely because their
policies don't meet Obamacare's minimum standards of coverage.
Christie, appearing on CBS on the first anniversary of Superstorm Sandy's slamming into the East Coast, was criticized by Republicans after he appeared with Obama in the final stages of the 2012 campaign and offered praise for his handling of that disaster.
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