President Barack Obama, bowing to heavy pressure from fellow Democrats and a storm of criticism from Republicans, ordered changes to his health care law on Thursday, preserving private insurance plans that had been canceled because they failed to meet new standards under the overhaul.
Thursday's decision marks an abrupt reversal for Obama's administration, a change designed to take some of the political heat off congressional Democrats who are facing re-election next year in the face of American voters who are not yet convinced they benefit under the new health care regime.
Obama said he had "heard loud and clear" from Americans who are facing cancellation despite Obama's repeated promises that his signature legislation would allow all Americans to keep their current insurance plan if they liked their coverage.
Even so, Obama said he was not going to "walk away from" the law that would help tens of millions of Americans to afford health insurance and that has brought down the cost of health care.
"The affordable care act is going to work," Obama said at as White House news conference. "We're just going to continue chipping away at this until the job is done."
Obama also took responsibility for the severe technical problems that have crippled the federal program's website for consumers since its Oct. 1 launch.
The President has been under enormous pressure from congressional Democrats to give ground on the cancellation issue under the health care overhaul, a program likely to be at the center of next year's midterm elections for control of the House of Representatives and Senate.
Obama and members of his administration are struggling to get his signature health care initiative right, conscious that it will have a determining effect on how history judges his presidency. Under the law, all Americans must purchase health insurance. Those who can't afford it will be offered subsidies in states that accepted federal money.
Thursday's decision marks a swift pivot for Obama's administration, which had said Americans would benefit from better insurance plans than the ones that had been canceled.
Only last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a Senate panel she doubted that retroactively permitting insurers to sell canceled policies "can work very well since companies are now in the market with an array of new plans. Many have actually added consumer protections in the last three-and-a-half years."
The clunky rollout of the plan has given Republicans a new line of attack ahead of next year's congressional elections. The party hopes that will offset the drubbing it took in public opinion over last month's 16-day partial government shutdown and debt crisis, which House Republicans instigated in a failed attempt to derail Obamacare.
Officials said letters were going out to insurance companies on Thursday informing them they could continue to sell existing individual policies to current customers for 2014, even in cases of plans that had been ruled inadequate under the new law.
Insurers would be required to notify consumers that alternatives exist under "Obamacare," and also to specify the areas in which current plans fall short of the coverage required in the law. At the same time, the plans would be closed to anyone not currently enrolled.
The administration is also promising improvements in the balky federal website blamed for bringing in fewer than 27,000 in 36 states combined in October. The administration had said in advance the enrollment numbers would fall far short of initial expectations. After weeks of highly publicized technical woes, they did.
"That's on me," Obama said.
Adding in enrollment of more than 79,000 in the 14 states with their own websites, the nationwide number of 106,000 October sign-ups was barely one-fifth of what officials had projected — and a small fraction of the millions who have received private coverage cancellations as a result of the federal law.
The administration said an additional 1 million people have been found eligible to buy coverage in the markets, with about one-third qualifying for tax credits to reduce their premiums. Another 396,000 have been found eligible for Medicaid, which covers low-income people.
Republicans, who have repeatedly tried to repeal the law since it passed three years ago, were unmoved.
House Speaker John Boehner, speaking in advance of the president's announcement, insisted it was time to "scrap this law once and for all."
"You can't fix this government-run health care plan called Obamacare," he said. "It's just not fixable."
Administration officials and senior congressional Democrats expressed confidence in the program's future.
"We expect enrollment will grow substantially throughout the next five months," said Sebelius, who is in charge of the program.
"Even with the issues we've had, the marketplace is working and people are enrolling," she added.
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Associated Press writers David Espo, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Julie Pace contributed to this report.