Obamacare sign-ups surge despite Trump victory

One of the biggest questions concerns the Affordable Care Act (i.e. Obamacare), the 2010 legislation meant to improve health insurance for more people.

After meetings in Florida of the Republican Governors Association where he was elected chairman of the group, Walker said the GOP-led Congress and President-elect Donald Trump should quickly pass legislation to end the Affordable Care Act. “But I think what we need to focus on first is what we would replace it with and what are the steps we would take to do that”.

“You can’t unscramble an egg”.

Silver plans, which cover about 70 percent of their customers’ health costs, are the most popular plans sold on Obamacare marketplaces. The US Chamber of Commerce said that deters business growth. Another finding showed that the majority of young Republican women see birth control as a personal convenience instead of as a basic and crucial health care need. Republicans have not settled on what to replace the law with and, until they do, it is unlikely the law will be repealed entirely, she said. Although I also agree with Blackman’s admonition against nuking the legislative filibuster, I disagree with his warning against repealing most of Obamacare through reconciliation.

That last item is hugely unpopular. Since his victory, he has indicated that there are some parts of the signature law of his predecessor that he would like to keep – specifically, the provision that allows children to stay on their parents’ insurance policies until they are 26 and one that prevents insurers from rejecting coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

These are heady days over at The Heritage Foundation, the premier right-wing think tank/public policy institute in the country, that has been slashing away at Obamacare since debate started over it seven years ago.

However, practically overnight the Republicans have substantially raised the stakes in their drive to reform the government health care system and cut costs.

In Arizona, for individuals who do not have Medicaid or coverage through an employer plan, there will be one insurance company available beginning in January 2017.

Goodwin estimates another 20,000 South Carolinians are eligible for health-care subsidies but haven’t used them.

So it’s possible that women could lose coverage for services that are now free, such as contraception, mammograms, folic acid supplements during pregnancy, and screenings for gestational diabetes, sexually transmitted diseases, and cervical cancer.

Nationwide, some 20 million have signed up for coverage under the law, a formidable hurdle to overcome before overturning the law. In an MSNBC town hall this February, Trump stated, “we can’t let people die in the streets…”

An explainer of seven different GOP ObamaCare replacement plans.

While 2017 coverage is already locked in, an exodus of insurers for 2018 would throw coverage into doubt for the roughly 10 million people enrolled in ObamaCare plans.

Otherwise, Bailey added, “Insurance companies. will have to charge awesome premiums that nobody can afford”.

During an October 5 webinar sponsored by AIS, Thomas Scully, who served as CMS administrator under President George W. Bush, predicted that without a plan to replace the ACA, nothing will happen until at least 2019 as lawmakers spend the next two years debating alternatives. As for the uninsured, Trump stated “I would make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people…the government’s going to pay for it”. They will near certainly provide more coverage than Americans had before Obamacare, but also less than what exists now.

Coleman called the drop in sign-ups “worrisome”, pointing out that the Obama administration has been “trying to increase enrollment, obviously, to stabilize these risk pools so that premiums don’t continue to spike”.