Health- care sign-ups down only slightly
More than 233,000 Ohioans signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act during the open-enrollment period for 2018 that ended last week.
That was down slightly from the 239,000 who signed up last year, when the enrollment period was twice as long and 10 times more was spent on advertising and outreach.
Nationwide, 8.8 million Americans chose a plan by the Dec. 15 deadline, according to federal officials, a bit behind the 9.2 million who signed up for coverage for 2017.
The data provided Thursday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services represent enrollment only in the 39 states that use the federal health-care marketplace —HealthCare. gov — to sign up for coverage. The remaining states and the District of Columbia run their own health exchanges, many which have extended deadlines.
The enrollment numbers beat the expectations of many.
“This is fabulous,” said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, which has helped people sign up for coverage.
“This says the Affordable Care Act works,” Hamler-Fugitt said. “It brought insurance to those who were uninsured or underinsured. Five years into the ACA, 1 million more Ohioans have gotten coverage,” she said, referring to those who obtained private coverage on the exchange and the more than 700,000 others who are now insured through the expansion of Medicaid under the 2010 law, also known as Obamacare.
Advocates for the uninsured had predicted enrollment would be far lower this year. They blamed President Donald Trump’s administration for trying to undermine the sign-up process by cutting the 2018 enrollment period from 12 weeks to six and slashing funding for advertising and navigators who aided thousands to sign up.
“These strong enrollment numbers remind us how highly families in America value the private health insurance offered through marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act. Despite efforts by the Trump administration to suppress enrollment ... families from across the nation overcame the hurdles put in their way and signed up for coverage at an unprecedented pace,” said Frederick Isasi, executive director of Families USA.
Seema Verma, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said Thursday that this year’s enrollment period went smoothly and was the most cost effective to date.
Open enrollment started Nov. 1 with a burst of sign-ups and, similar to previous years, there was a surge during the final days as well.
More than 4 million of the 8.8 million Americans who signed up for a plan did so in the final week of enrollment, a new record for weekly enrollment. Overall, most consumers, 6.4 million, were renewing coverage while 2.4 million were purchasing from the marketplace for the first time. Statewide breakdowns were not immediately available.
“Our goal from the beginning was to empower patients across the health-care delivery system and make sure that Americans who chose to enroll in the exchanges had a good customer experience while making enrollment more cost efficient, and the results show that we accomplished our goal,” Verma said.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services cut spending and reduced the openenrollment marketing budget this year to a level similar to what is spent on other major programs, like Medicare, she said.
CMS spent only $10 million on marketing and outreach, a little more than $1 per enrollee, compared with $100 million last year, nearly $11 per enrollee.
The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, offers subsidized private insurance to low- and middle-income people who don’t have coverage through their employer and don’t qualify for government health care like Medicaid.
This week, Congress, as part of its tax bill, repealed Obamacare’s individual mandate starting in 2019. That requires that people get health coverage or be subject to a tax penalty, with some exceptions. Elimination of the mandate in 2019 could prompt some consumers to drop coverage next year.
Trump and Republican leaders have pledged to repeal the 2010 law entirely, arguing it is failing and collapsing on its own, but so far they have been unsuccessful.
Obamacare supporters say the effort is misguided.
“Nearly 9 million people enrolled in marketplace coverage offered through HealthCare.gov,” Isasi said. “We urge President Trump and his congressional allies to honor the will of the American people and abandon their efforts to undermine the ACA health coverage relied on by working families.”
WASHINGTON — Rep. Jim Jordan of Urbana said he has “real cause for concern” that the FBI “may have been trying to tip” the presidential election last year to Democrat Hillary Clinton in an effort to defeat Republican Donald Trump.
During an interview Thursday with WHIO Radio in Dayton, Jordan, one of the most-conservative Republicans in the U.S. House, said text messages between Peter Strzok, former deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, and Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer, suggested an intent “to put in place a plan and execute a plan to try to stop Donald Trump from being president.”
“When ... the deputy head of counter-intelligence is making those kinds of statements in a text message, that is real cause for concern,” Jordan said. “It seems to show the FBI may have been trying to tip the scales in this whole election process, which should never happen in this country.”
Jim Manley, a onetime adviser to former Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., called Jordan’s assertion “a completely ridiculous idea from the imagination of rightwing kooks.”
“This kind of rhetoric is extremely dangerous,” Manley said. “For him to suggest there is some kind of cabal within the FBI that’s working to overturn our elections is straight out of a Third World country.”
Allies of Clinton and Trump both suggest that the FBI was involved in trying to defeat their candidates.
Special counsel Robert Mueller removed Strzok last summer from a key role in his investigation of whether Trump and his campaign aides colluded with Russian officials to damage Clinton’s chances. Mueller discovered Strzok and Page had sent each other text messages highly critical of Trump and his candidacy.
Removing Strzok has not stopped Trump’s Republican allies from launching a series of attacks on both the FBI and Mueller’s team. While saying that he is more concerned with FBI actions before the election, Jordan told CNN Wednesday that “most of Mueller’s team is anti-Trump.”
Mueller, a Republican and former director of the FBI, is one of the most-respected attorneys in Washington. Former President George W. Bush tapped Mueller to head the FBI in 2001.
Some GOP lawmakers are urging Trump to fire Mueller. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., warned that if Trump fires Mueller, “our country would face a constitutional crisis.”
In addition, 171 House Democrats sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein urging that Mueller “be allowed to continue his investigation.”
The letter, signed by Ohio Democrats Joyce Beatty of Jefferson Township, Tim Ryan of Niles, Marcy Kaptur of Toledo and Marcia Fudge of Cleveland, said it is “unimaginable that Republicans would seek to intervene, discredit, obstruct, or terminate” Mueller’s investigation.