welcome to al jazeera america. president obama says at any moment on all of the trouble of the affordable care ability. act. there is relief in the fill babiephilippines whether it's cg slow. the government says it's moving too slowly . we are a waiting for the president to speak on the affordable care act. >> the president expected to announce a plan to follow through on the promise he repeatedly made during the campaign about the act.

many people have received cancellation letters about the current insurance policies. the president according to those that are familiar with what is about to happen will allow them to keep those policies. john is here right now. a lot of problems right now with the numbers. the biggest his approval rating. 39% because people don't trust him when it comes to this particular act. >> let's move this forward. this is not really about president obama he has a legacy enshshrined now. they'll probably get this right basbased on what happened in massachusetts. a w year from now we are at mid stormidterm elections. >> you mean politics has something to do this wit with t. >> we have the democrats that

have stood by the president steasteadfastly and they have sd right by him it's not about him. the man is not running for public office again. it's about them. a couple of weeks ago the republicans we didn't think would get licked. licked -- elected. that is what i was going to say. >> two weeks ago everybody was talking about the government shutdown and the president was in grave danger. >> if you are a elected representative in louisiana a republican state. you are very nervous. if you see the president has a approval rating of 39% you wonder how you will get on when you go on the still to come starting early january. >> it's not just the republicans that are concerned about the roll out of the affordable care ability. act. even though they are not for it. the white house has been disappointed since day one about the roll out and they had to

spell out the numbers. >> they had to come out with 106,000 and jaws dropped. and here is the president. >> good afternoon. today i want to update the american people on the efforts to implement and improve the affordable care act and i will take a couple of questions. >> before i do i want to say few words about the tragedy in the philippines. over the past days we have all been devastate devastate devastn haiyan. our prayers are with the filipino people and the filipino americans across the country who are being anxious about their y and friends back home one of our core princples is when someone

is in trouble america will help. we will continue to offer whatever assis assistance weigh. they have been on the ground to deliver food, water, medicine and shelter and to help with air lift today the aircraft carrier u.s.s. george washington arrived to help with search and rescue as well as supply aies and medil care and lo low gistty call por. support. it's about what our citizens can do it's about the big heartedness of the american people when thre they see others in trouble. i would ask anyone that would like to help to visit white house.com/typhoon. that will give you links to help

in ways you can support their ofoffefforts. our friends in the fill phoenixs will face a long road ahead but they have friends and partners in america. it's been six weeks skins se the accor affordable care act hn in business the roll out has been rough so far. and i think everybody understands that i'm not happy about the fact that the roll out has been, you know s. fraught with a whole range of problems i have been deep loly concerned about. today i want to talk about what we know abou about after the fit few weeks and what we can do to improve the roll out. in the first month 100,000 americans enrolled in new insurance plans. is that as high a number we

would like, absolutely not. >> that does mean that people wand affordable'healthcare. wewebsite has stopped people frm enrolling in the healthcar. ihealthcare in the first month a million people successfully completed an application for thes themselvesr their families. that is 1.5 million people and 106,000 have successfully signed up to get covered. and another 396,000 have the ability to gain access to medicade for the aid forwar fore acapulco. act. many who have difficult type and many are working and have a disability and they are like americans like everybody else and the fact they will be able

to get insurance is critically important. later today i will be in ohio where they have expanded medicade under the affordable care acted. ability. acted. and so bottom line is just in one month, despite all of the problems we have seen with the website more than 500,000 americans could know the security of healthcare by january 1st. many of them for the first time in their lives and that is life changing and it's significant. that still leaves about 1 million americans who successfully made it through the website and now qualified to buy insurance but have not picked a plan yet. and there is no question if the website were working as it supposed to that number would be much higher of people that have actually enrolled. that is problem number one.

making sure that the website works as it's supposed to. it's gotten better in the last few weeks but we are working 24/to get it working for a vast majority of americans in a smooth consistent way. another problem is that americans that have received letters interes from their insut may be losing plans they bought in the individual market often because they don't plea meet ths required for pre prescription ds or doctor visits. as i indicated earlier i completely get how upsetting it can be for americans. particularly when they heard assurassurances by me they coulp it. to those americans i hear you loud an clear. i said i would do what i could

to fix this problem and here we are to do it. to date those that have plans before the affordable care act they can keep those plans. that is a grandfather law. today we will extend that princple to those whose plans have changed since the law took effect and people that bought plans since the law came into at effect. the state sur insurers have they extend plans that have into 2014 and people who have plans that have been cancelled can ha chooe to enroll into the same kind of plan. we want them to inform their customers about two things. what protections these renewed plans don't include. and no. 2 that the market place offers new option with better

coverage and tax credit that might help you bring down the cost. so if you received one of these letters. i encourage you to take a look at the ma ar market place even e website is not working as smoothly for everybody yet. ththis fix won't solve every problem for every person. but it's going to help a lot of people. doing more will require work with congress. and i have said from the beginning i'm willing to work with democrats and republicans to fix problems as they arise. this is an example of what i'm talking about. we ca can always make this law k better. it's important to understand that the old individual market was not working well. and it's important that we don't pretend that some how that is a place worth going back to. too often it works fine as long

as you stay healthy. it doesn't work well when you are sick. year after year americans were reteenlroutinely exposed to finl ruin or dropped from kilometres acoveragealtogether even if thed their premiums on time. that is one of the reasons we pursued this reform in the first place. that is why i won't accept proposals that is an appeal to override the law an drag us back into the system we'll continue to make the case and even the folks that continue with the old plans they should shop around in the market place. therthere is a chance they may e able to buy better insurance at a lower cost. we'll do everything we can to help americans that received these cancellation notices i want people to remember there are 40 million americans that don't have healthcare system het all. i'm not going to walk away from

people that have a chance to get health insurance for the first time and i'm not going to walk away from a chance to help healthcare grow for i for the ft time in fift 50 years. we are w building a system that will help everyone. it's a complex process and there are all kinds of challenges of i'm sure there will be additional challengess that come up and it's important that that we are hon ove honest and straight-forward and when we come up with these problems and that we address them. we have to move forward on this. it took i us 100 years to talk about and implement a law for everybody to get health insurance my pledge to the american people is we are going to solve the problems that are there and we're going do get it

right and the affordable care act is going to work for people. with that i'm going to take your questions. >> the combination of the website problems and the concern over the policy cancellations has sparked a lot in your own party. and the polls show that you are taking a hit with the public with your overall job rating and factors such as trust and honesty. do you feel it's led to a preach in public trust and confidence in the government and if so how do you plan to resolve o that? >> there is no doubt that people are frustrated the we just came out of a shutdown and for the first time in 100 years that we can't pay our bills. peopland people breathe a sigh f relief and the next thing you know the president's healthcare reform can't get the website to work and there is this problem

with respect to cancellation notices. i understand why folks are truss frustrated. i would be to too. >> a lot of times people are looking at what is taking place in washington and not enough is being dob done to help me in my life. i'm the president of the u.s. and they expect me to do something about it. >> in terms of how i intend to approach it. i will keep working as hard as i can around the priorities that american people care about. i think it's leg wh legitimate m to expect me to have to win back the credibility on this healthcare law in particular and on a whole range of these issues in general. and you know, that is on me. we fumbled the roll out on this

healthcare law. >> there are a lot of things about it that are working really well. which people didn't notice because they weren't controversial. making sure that kid could stay on their parents' plans up through the age of 25 and making sure that seniors got more discounts. for the first three years. we always knew that these market places creating a place where people can shop and through competition get a better deal for the health insurance that their families need. we always knew that that was going to be complicated and everybody was going to pay a lot of attention to it. we should have done a better job getting that right on day one and not on day 28 or day 40. i am confident that by the time

we look back on this next year, that people are going to say, this is working well and it's helping a lot of people. but my intention in terms of winning back the confidence of the american people is to work as hard as i can. identify the problems that we have got. make sure that we are fixing them whether it's a website or whether it's making sure that folks that have these cancellation notices get help. we are just going to keep on chipping away at this until the job is done. major garrett. >> thank you, mr. president's. you said when the law was debated you if you like the plan you can keep it. americans believed you sir when you said it over and over.

do you believe that americans deserve accountability when your the fact that millions of americans would fall into the gap you are trying toe administratively trying to fix right now. and that is one question and you were informed two weeks before the launch of the website that it was failing the most basic tests internally and the decision was to lawn 76 the lae website. >> on the website i was not informed directly that the web hiwebsite was not working as it was supposed to. had i been informed i would not be going out and saying hey this is great. i'm not stupid enough to say it's like shopping on amazon or

travelocity if a week before the website opened it wasn't going to work. clearly we and i did not have enough awareness about the problems with the website. even a week into it the thinking was these were glitches that would be fixed with patches opposed to broader systemic problems that took longer to fix and we are still working on them. so, that doesn't excuse the facts that it doesn't work. i think it's fair, to say no, major garrett, we would not have rolled out something that we knew it wasn't going to work as it supposed to. given the sui scrutiny on the website. with the pledge i made if you like your plan you can keep it. i think, and i have said in interviews, there is no doubt in the way i put that forward unequivocally, ended up not

being accurate. it was not because of my intention not to deliver on that commitment and promise we put a grandfather clause into the law but it was insufficient. keep in mind that the individual market accounts for 5% of the population. so, when i said, you can keep your healthcare, i'm looking at folks that have employer based healthcare and i am looking at folks who have medicare and medicade and that accounts for the vast majority of americans. and for people that don't have any health insurance at all. that didn't apply. my commitment to them was that you will be able to get affordable healthcare for the first time. you have an individual market that accounts for 5% of the population and my working assumption was that the majority of those folks would find better policies at lower cost or the

same cost in the market places and that the universe of folks that potentially would not find a better deal in the market place the grandfather clause would work sufficiently for them. and it didn't. and again, that is on us which is why -- that's on me and that is why i am trying to fix it. i said last week and i repeat. that is something i deeply regret because it's scary getting a cancellation notice. it's important to understand that out of that population typically, there is constant churn in that market. this market is not very stable and reliable for people. so, people have a lot of complaints when they are in that market place. as long as you are healthy

things seem to be going pretty good. and so a lot of people think i have good insurance until they get sick and then suddenly they look at the fine print and they have a $50,000 out of pocket expense they can't pay. we know on average over the last decade each year peopl premiumsn that market will go up an average of 15% a year. i know that because when we were talking about healthcare one of the individual complaints was i bought healthcare in the individual market and i got a letter from my insurer and they dropped me or my premiums sky rocketed 20 or 30% why aren't we doing something about this. my primary goal has been to make sure that that market is stable and fair and has the couldn't cr protections and that people

don't get a rude surprise when they need healthcare insurance. if you got a cancellation notice and you haven't been sick and if fits your budget and now you get this notice you are going to be worried about it. and if the insurer insurer is se reach you are getting this notice is the affordable care act you are going to be understandbly aggravated about it. for a big portion of those people the truth is they got a notice saying we are jacking up your rates by 30%. from here on out we are not going to cover x,yy and z ill illnesses. one of the things i understood when we te decided to reform the health insurance market. part of the reasons why it

hasn't been done before and it's difficult to do. is that anything that is going on that is tough in the healthcare market if you initiated a reform can be attributed to your law. >> so what we want to do is to be able to say to these folks, you know what the affordable care act is not the reason why insurers have to cancel your plan. what folks may find the insurance companies may come back and say we want to clark -- charge you 20% more than we did last year or we are not going to cover prescription drugs now. >> did you decide, sir, that iss a simple declaration is something that the person in amn people could handle. >> no i think, as i said

earlier, major, my expectation was for 9 98% of the american people it genuinely won change at all or they would be pleasantly surprised with the options in the market place and the grandfather clause would cover the rest. that proved not to be the case. and that is on me. and the american people those that got cancellation notices do deserve and have received an apology from me. they don't just want words they want to ensure that they are in a better place and we can meet that commitment. and by the way it's important for me to note that there are a bunch of folks up in congress that made this statement and they were sincere about it. and the fact that you have got this percentage of people who have had this you know impact, i want them to know, you know,

their senator or congressman, they were making representations based on what i told them and what this white house and our administrative staff stole them. it's not on them it's on us. it's something we intend to fix. steve. d >> do you have reason to believe that iran would walk away from nuclear talks and would a diplomatic breakdown at this stage leave you no option but military action. >> and how t do you respond to e penal on the hilpeople on the hd tough sanctions will make -- >> i have said before and i will repete oreceiptrepeat. we do not want iran to have nuclear weapons.

it would not be dangerous to us and our allies but it could trigger a nuclear arms race that would make life more difficult for all of us. >> our policy is that iran cannot have nuclear westminster. weapons and i'm leaving all options on the table to ensure that we might thameetthat goal. point no. 2. the reason we have such vigorous sanctions is that i put in macee came into office to have the most structured sanctions ever. i know a little bit about sanctions since we set the them. and played sur made sure that wd the international community and they had bite. and the intentio intention alwao

bring the iranians to the table stoso we could resolve this peacefully. that is my preference. because any armed conflict has cost to it. and it's the best way to ensure that a country doesn't have nuclear weapons is that they are making a decision not to have nuclear weapons and we are in a position to verify they don't have my clea nuclear weapons. and as consequence of what we put in place and making that happen. iran's economy has been crippled. they had a negative 5% growth rate last year. and their currency plummeted. they are having significant problems in just the day-to-day economy on the ground in iran. and the president made a decision that he was prepared to

come and have a conversation with the international community about what they could do to solve this problem with us. we now have had a series of conversations and it has never been realistic that we would resolve the entire problem all at once. what we have done is seen the possibility of an agreement in which iran would halt advances on it's program, that it would dilute some of the highly enriched you uranium that makest easier for them to potentially produce a weapon. that they are subjecting then themselves to much more vigorous inspections so we know exactly what they are doing in all of their various facilities. and that would then provide time and space for us to test over a certain period of months whether or not they are prepared to

actually resolve this issue to the satisfaction of the international community. making us confident that in fact they are not pursuing a nuclear weapons program. in return, the basic structure of what has been talked about usuaalthough not completed is tt we would provide very modest relief at the margins of the sanctions that we have set up. but importantly we would leave in place the core sanctions that are most effective and have most impact on the iranian economy. specifically oil sanctions and sanctions with respect to banks and financing. and what that gives us is the opportunity to test how serious are they. but it also gives us an

assurance that if it turns out six months from now they are not serious we can dial those sanctions right back up. my message to could b congress n thabeen let's see if this short term phase one deal can be to our satisfaction that we are absolutely certain that they are not dancing the program we can buy additional month in terms of their break out capacity. let's test howling the how wille tto resolve this diplomatically and peacefully. we havwe will have lost nothingt the end of the day they are not prepared to provide the international community the hard