Michael Moore: 'ObamaCare is awful'

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California, Feb. 20, 2013. ((Reuters))

Michael Moore is not happy with ObamaCare.

The liberal documentary filmmaker marked the Jan. 1 launch of coverage under the Affordable Care Act with a scathing op-ed that declared: "ObamaCare is awful."

This, he wrote in The New York Times, is the "dirty little secret many liberals have avoided saying out loud for fear of aiding the president's enemies."

Moore's problems with the law, though, naturally are different than the complaints from Republican critics.

Moore continues to back a single-payer, government-run system and argues that the current one is too favorable to the insurance industry.

"I believe Obamacare's rocky start -- clueless planning, a lousy website, insurance companies raising rates, and the president's telling people they could keep their coverage when, in fact, not all could -- is a result of one fatal flaw: The Affordable Care Act is a pro-insurance-industry plan implemented by a president who knew in his heart that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go," he wrote.

Yet in the same op-ed, Moore also called ObamaCare a "godsend," because of its protections preventing insurance companies from denying or dropping sick patients.

He urged the public to pressure "blue states" to add a so-called "public option" -- a plan run by the government -- and "red states" to expand Medicaid.