Bill Maher, liberal host of HBO's "Real Time" and long-time Obamacare proponent, criticized the health care law for being, perhaps purposefully, more expensive and too confusing.
"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 that 'it's working,'" Maher said Friday, The Daily Caller reported.
He added that there's no doubt that "for people with preexisting conditions, this is a Godsend."
"But," Maher said as he reported on a recent New York Times article that "basically said, you know, 'when Obama said if you like your plan, nothing will change' - well, everything has changed."
"Forty-six percent of people are having trouble paying health care costs now, up 10 percent from a year ago because the deductibles went up, the co-pays went up," he said. "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," Maher quipped.
Maher then lashed out at the insurance companies and for-profit health care system, saying that he thinks the law is intentionally confusing so as to increase profits.
"This is predictable," Maher said, The Daily Caller reported. "Insurance companies are sharks. They were always going to find a way to do this, 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."
"People are 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."
Instead of an individual mandate, Maher said that the U.S. should implement a single-payer system in which one single public agency organizes health care financing, Fox News reported.
Maher concluded, "as long as you allow the profit motive into sickness and death with people, it's just always going to be fucked up."
