Obamacare Open Enrollment Soars To Record Levels

WASHINGTON, DC — Americans are scrambling in record numbers to sign up for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act, despite a shortened enrollment period and a 90 percent cutback in advertising to let people know Obamacare is still the law of the land, according to published reports.

President Trump and Republicans in Congress have pledged to dismantle the program, which provides access to health insurance for all Americans. So far, they’ve failed to deliver on campaign promises to repeal and replace Obamacare, which they say increases the cost of health insurance for all Americans and interferes with personal medical coverage.

And though Trump signed an executive order that eliminates subsidies to insurers to reduce out-of-pocket costs for the poor, his insistence that the mandate that Americans buy health insurance or pay a tax penalty didn’t make it into the first iteration of Republicans’ rewrite of the tax code.

Open enrollment ends Dec. 15 for health coverage beginning Jan. 1, 2018. The 45-day open enrollment period compares to previous years when Americans were given three months to sign up for coverage. And though Trump all but eliminated the budget to advertise open enrollment, Obamacare signups have been brisk on the healthcare.gov website.

More than 1 million Americans browsed the Affordable Care Act website on Nov. 1, the first day of open enrollment, and more than 200,000 signed up for plans, sources close to the process told The Hill. That’s double the number who signed up on the first day of open enrollment in 2016, the report said.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that when Dec. 15 rolls around, total Obamacare enrollment fpr 2018 could reach 11 million, up from about 10 million in 2017.

The rush to sign up for government health insurance came after a social media push led by former President Obama, whose tweet on the start of open enrollment for 2018 health coverage was retweeted 137,000 times.

Democratic and progressive groups have been frantically reminding their bases they'll have only a short window to sign up for private Obamacare insurance. Democrats have also protested plans by the Department of Health and Human Services to shut down the signup website for maintenance for 12 hours from midnight to noon on almost every Sunday of the Affordable Care Act enrollment period. The only Sunday that won’t happen is the last before open enrollment ends, on Dec. 10.

Dismantling the Affordable Care Act could leave millions of Americans to lose their health insurance, and millions more could lose protection for pre-existing conditions. As it stands now, insurance companies can’t penalize people with pre-existing medical conditions, but that could change under various proposals to replace the Affordable Care Act.

Adding confusion is the Republican National Committee's Trump reelection ad that says insurance premiums are “skyrocketing” because Democrats blocked “a better plan to repeal and replace Obamacare once and for all — obstructing our president just to score political points with the radical left.”

That's not true. Democrat votes weren't needed to pass repeal-and-replace plans, something the ad fails to mention. Some Republicans — including Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Susan Collins of Maine, who Trump has publicly criticized — broke ranks with their party and refused to support various legislative packages to dismantle Obamacare.

What is true is that premiums are going up an average of 34 percent for some of the most popular Affordable Care Act plans, according to the consulting firm Avalere Health. But that's because the Trump administration’s actions — ending the subsidies to insurers, the repeal-and-replace debate and an executive order that may open a path for lower cost plans outside of the Obama-era law — are adding instability to the underlying problems of the health law’s marketplaces, Avalere Health said.

But consumers are bound to be confused, Daniel Polsky, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and executive director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, told Reuters.

“It’s been such a flood of information. A lot of the population thinks the Affordable Care Act has already been put under,” Polsky said. “The strange premium increases are going to be very confusing for consumers.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)