President Barack Obama defended his health care law, saying the flawed online insurance exchange will get fixed and accusing critics of "grossly misleading" the public about how the program works.

Speaking at a rally in Boston Wednesday, Obama said the experience of Massachusetts with the start of its health care system in 2006 shows that the federal version, passed in 2010, will succeed. He addressed two criticisms from Republicans: that while he promised that people who liked their insurance could keep it, not all can, and that some people's insurance will get more expensive.

"A fraction" of higher income Americans will pay more for insurance plans that are better than they had, Obama said. Those people being thrown off plans that don't meet the law's standards will be getting better insurance, he said.

"If you leave that stuff out, you're being grossly misleading, to say the least," Obama said at historic Faneuil Hall. "It's no surprise that some of the same folks trying to scare people now are the same folks who've been trying to sink the Affordable Care Act from the beginning."

Obama spoke hours after his Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, apologized at a House hearing in Washington for the "debacle" of the failed opening of the online insurance exchange that is a central part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Romney's law

The hall where he delivered his remarks is where then-Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican who challenged Obama in the 2012 presidential campaign, signed the Massachusetts health care overhaul into law. Obama said Romney was joined that day by members of both parties, including now-deceased Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who championed universal health care.

Obama said a major part of the state law's success was from the bipartisan support it received. They "joined forces to connect the progressive vision of health care for all with some ideas about markets and competition that had long been championed by conservatives," Obama said. "It worked."

The flawed debut of the federal exchange, where uninsured Americans can shop for coverage, and the prospect of millions of people being thrown off existing plans have tarnished Obama's signature first-term legislative achievement and threaten to overwhelm his second-term agenda.

Obama's polling

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Obama health care critics misleading