It's been one years since Congress failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But that doesn't mean the GOP has given up the fight. bit.ly/2uzg4Q7
Since the beginning of 2017, the Trump administration and Congress have continued their assault on the ACA. The following are examples of what I mean, as chronicled by @CitizenCohn and me...
Let's start here, with the simple fact that Trump has, right out in the open, frequently talked about sabotaging the ACA for political gain. bit.ly/2uzYRGj
Right after Trump took office, his administration canceled TV ads the Obama administration had already bought to promote health insurance enrollment. The next year, they slashed funding for advertising and enrollment assistance. bit.ly/2emNsAz
The Trump administration's cuts to enrollment and outreach campaigns will be even deeper for the next open enrollment period than they were for the last one. bit.ly/2u93Tsf
Once repeal failed, Trump turned right to executive actions that threaten to undermine the insurance system the ACA established. bit.ly/2yHD27i
Trump's executive actions on health care mostly seek to permit insurance companies to resume selling junk plans with skimpy benefits and little-to-no protections for people with pre-existing conditions. bit.ly/2OfA1Tw
Trump also refused to pay billions of dollars the federal government owes health insurance companies serving the poorest customers, which led to premium increases. bit.ly/2kNsp06
Insurers and state regulators found a workaround to protect subsidized ACA customers from those premium increases, but Trump's actions still hurt unsubsidized people and caused unnecessary confusion for shoppers. bit.ly/2iwQS5i
Congress repealed the tax penalties for people who don't comply with the ACA's individual mandate. Everyone hates the mandate, but removing the penalties caused insurers to raise rates in anticipation of fewer healthy customers. bit.ly/2jCH0sd
The Trump administration also has taken aim at Medicaid, inviting states to seek approval for new rules requiring some beneficiaries to work if they want to keep their benefits. It's a solution in search of a problem. bit.ly/2CShh6E
Trump's ongoing Obamacare sabotage, by the way, has measurable, harmful effects on people. bit.ly/2uR6eIK
The Trump administration is fully aware of its progress in breaking the ACA insurance market, too. bit.ly/2uSFOX5
Basically, the Trump administration has done virtually nothing to address the actual shortcomings of the ACA and has done lots to make it worse. bit.ly/2OgU0RL
The biggest "reforms" Trump and other GOP officials are making to the health insurance system amount to making bad insurance more widely available. bit.ly/2Hlx6VA
Potentially the most damaging thing is the Trump administration's refusal to defend the ACA in a lawsuit from GOP state officials seeking to invalidate it. The DoJ wants a federal court to toss most of the ACA's protections for pre-existing conditions. bit.ly/2K0E3wI
There's much, much more, some of which HuffPost covered and some of which other outlets did. That includes more subtle things, like the federal officials who run these programs constantly badmouthing it and references to the ACA being disappeared from government websites.
There's no reason to believe that the Trump administration will reverse course and instead try to make the ACA work as best as possible. That's bad news for the people who rely on this market for their health coverage. /fin
Postscript: Maybe someday Republican politicians will come up with a better way to run a health care system. They thus far have completely failed to do so. bit.ly/2CrykMJ
