Just 10 days before Donald Trump is sworn in as president, the Obama administration is going on the offensive to protect the president’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly referred to as Obamacare.
First, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced today that with three weeks to go on ACA open enrollment, sign-ups are running ahead of last year’s pace with 11.5 million persons having used the exchanges to acquire health insurance. At the same time, a spokesman for HHS warned that eliminating Obamacare — which Trump has promised to do — could force 30 million people to lose their coverage.
Second, the Council of Economic Advisers issued a briefing paper to counter Republican claims that rising Obamacare insurance premiums had put the program on a “death spiral.” The paper claimed that this year’s dramatic premium increases, which averaged 25 percent, had in fact laid a “foundation for more stable pricing in the years to come.”