President Obama tonight continued to walk back his previous promise on the health care law that "if you like your health plan, you can keep it" with a bit of revisionist history.

"One of the reasons that we took up health care reform was not just to help the uninsured, but also the underinsured or the badly insured," Obama told supporters at an Organizing for Action event in Washington, D.C.

Obama explained that if you have or had a substandard plan before the Affordable Care Act became law and "you really liked that plan, what we said was you could keep it, if it hasn't changed since the law passed."

White House Defends Health Care Bypass

In selling the Affordable Care Act to the American public, the president often repeated the same refrain: "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan," he said in St. Charles, Mo., March 10, 2010.

"If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor," he said five days later in Strongsville, Ohio.

Now, with hundreds of thousands of Americans receiving cancellation notices, the president has come under fire for misleading the American public. Obama tonight said he understands it must be "scary" for Americans receiving these letters, but assured consumers that "we are making the insurance market better for everybody."

The White House has said it should come as no surprise that a small portion of the population who purchase insurance on their own may be forced to switch plans because their providers have made changes that don't meet the standards established under the Affordable Care Act.

The president first tweaked his original promise in a speech in Boston last week where he said that "for the vast majority of people who have health insurance that works, you can keep it."