Bill Clinton attacks Obamacare as 'the craziest thing in the world' and claims small business people are 'getting killed in this deal'

• e-mail

Bill Clinton lambasted President Barack Obama's signature law as 'the craziest thing in the world' on Monday.

The poor and the elderly are getting a good deal, the former Oval Office occupant said of Obamacare.

'The people who are getting killed in this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies,' he contended.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO 

Bill Clinton lambasted President Barack Obama's signature law as 'the craziest thing in the world' on Monday 

Embracing her husband: Bill Clinton is now being used by his wife's campaign to reach white men who she is failing to gain support from

The ex-president was campaigning in Flint, Michigan, for his wife when he tore down Obama'a health care law.

'You’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care, and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half and it’s the craziest thing in the world,' Clinton said. 

Hillary Clinton wants to expand Medicaid and Medicare. Under the current system, retirees become eligible for federally-funded health care when they turn 65.

The Democratic presidential nominee says she wants to amend the program to allow Americans that are 10 years younger voluntarily participate.

She was caught saying at a fundraiser that Obamacare 'has done a lot of good, but I’m gonna fix some of the things that need fixing. It’s like any other new program.'

'We’ve got to make it work even better,' she said in leaked audio, released this week by hackers.

In the Democratic primary Clinton assailed her opponent for proposing a Medicare-for-all program she said would significantly increase middle class Americans' tax burden.

They announced a truce in July, with Clinton proposing an additional $40 billion in funding the program over the next 10 years.

She also threw her support behind the creation of a 'public option' plan that would make the government an insurer in addition to private companies competing on the federal marketplace.

Signature policy: The Affordable Care Act, nicknamed Obamacare, is seen by the president as the biggest single achievement of his presidency

'The current system works fine if you're eligible for Medicaid, if you're a lower-income working person; if you're already on Medicare, or if you get enough subsidies on a modest income that you can afford your health care,' Bill Clinton asserted in his Monday speech.

The explainer-in-chief said too many Americans are being left in the cold.

The White House said Tuesday it wished Clinton hadn't described the health care system the way he did.

'It's not exactly clear to me what argument he was making, and so I'll let him and his team explain that,' Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.

Obama's spokesman said, 'The president's quite proud of the accomplishment of the Affordable Care Act. 

'The American people benefit from the way the law has been implemented in terms of expanding coverage; in terms of limiting the growth in but also in terms of the many consumer protections that people who already had health insurance in the past now benefit from.'

Hillary Clinton was caught saying at a fundraiser that Obamacare 'has done a lot of good, but I’m gonna fix some of the things that need fixing. It’s like any other new program'

The president readily acknowledges 'there are some things that could be done to further strengthen the law,' Earnest said, and supports Hillary Clinton's pursuit of those reforms.  

Angel Urena, spokesman to Bill Clinton, told DailyMail.com that the former president’s remarks were ‘taken out of context.’ 

'While he was slightly short-handed, it's clear to everyone, including President Obama, that improvements are needed,' Urena said. 

Donald Trump has pledged to entirely abolish the Affordable Care Act, in common with the Republicans' plan in Congress.

He railed against Bill at a Tuesday rally, arguing that the former president 'came out and told the truth about Obamacare.

'He's absolutely trashed President Obama's signature legislation,' Trump said. 

Trump said Clinton likely put her husband Bill 'through hell' after he called it 'the craziest thing in the world.'

'And she wants to double down on Obamacare! I bet he went through hell last night,' the Republican presidential nominee told a packed arena in Prescott Valley, Arizona.

'Can you imagine? Can you imagine what he went through after making that statement? He went through hell.'

'But honestly,' Trump added, 'there have been many nights when he's gone through hell with Hillary.' 

Bill had brought up Trump on Monday as he said, ‘We got to figure out now what to do on healthcare. Her opponent said, "Oh, just repeal it all. The market will take care of it." That didn't work out very well for us, did it? We wound up with the most expensive system in the world and we insured the smallest percentage of people.’

Clinton said the simplest way to fix the system would be to ‘figure out an affordable rate and let people use that.'

Insurers are overcharging in case they get ‘unlucky’ and lose money, he stated.

‘It doesn't make any sense. The insurance model doesn't work here; it's not like life insurance, it's not like casualties, it's not like predicting flooding. It doesn't work.

'So Hillary believes we should simply let people who are above the line for getting these subsidies have access to affordable entry into the Medicare and Medicaid programs,' he said. 'They'll all be covered, it will not hurt the program, we will not lose a lot of money. And we ought to do it.’ 

His attack on Obamacare came at the start of a campaign swing for his wife. 

The ex-president had until now been largely kept on the sidelines of his wife's campaign but is seen as able to reach the white male voters she is struggling to engage.

However his attack on Obamacare may trigger concern within Hillary's inner circle. 

Although initially she had intended to keep her distance from Obama to avoid being seen as seeking a third term to his two, in recent weeks she has embraced his support and proclaimed herself as running as his heir.

Any suggestion of a re-appearance of the sort of tension between her husband and Obama which happened in the final weeks of her failed 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination would be a distraction from her current strategy. 

In 2008 Bill was a high-profile advocate for his wife and made a series of attacks on Obama, one of which was criticized as being racially loaded.

He said of Obama's performance in South Carolina: 'Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here.'