In a dramatic break from a long-standing norm of defending federal laws, Attorney General Jeff Session has announced that the Department of Justice will not defend the Affordable Care Act in a lawsuit filed in Texas by 20 Republican-governed states. The lawsuit seeks to declare all of ACA [aka “Obamacare”] unconstitutional and, therefore, invalid. In other words, the Trump administration is attempting to do in the courts what Republicans in Congress failed to do in 2017.

The decision was approved by [if not ordered by] Donald Trump, said Sessions, in the opening paragraphs of a three-page letter he sent to the court. [For what it’s worth—meaning not much—Trump is on the record as promising to protect coverage for pre-existing health conditions—one of the most popular aspects of the ACA. If the court invalidates the ACA, with Trump’s support, those protections would be gone. An estimated 130 million adults under the age of 65 in the U.S. have a pre-existing health condition.]

The Washington Post calls the lawsuit and the Department of Justice’s position in favor of it…

…a bold swipe at the ACA, a Republican whipping post since its 2010 passage…[the lawsuit] does not immediately affect any of its provision. But it puts the law on far more wobbly legal footing in the case, which is being heard by a GOP-appointed judge who has in other recent cases ruled against more minor aspects

In a telling twist, three career DOJ lawyers quit shortly before Sessions submitted his brief. According to AP, they were replaced with political appointees.

Defense of the law now falls to Attorneys General from 16 other states. In a press release issued yesterday upon the filing of the states’ brief in opposition, Attorney General Xavier Becerra of California said of the lawsuit,

The lawsuit initiated by Texas is dangerous and reckless and would destroy the ACA as we know it. It would leave millions of Americans without access to affordable, quality healthcare. It is irresponsible and puts politics ahead of working families. We won’t sit back as Texas and others try yet again to dismantle our healthcare system. Our coalition of states and partners across the country will fight any effort to strip families of their health insurance.”

It’s anyone’s guess as to whether this latest assault will be approved by a judge. Some legal scholars have called the arguments “ludicrous.” [Also ludicrous would be any attempt by me—a non-lawyer—to explain why they describe it that way. For an actual explanation, please check out this link. ]

So, the fight to preserve a good idea—ACA—that is very popular and has benefited millions of Americans—is not over. In their vindictive battle against all things Obama, Republicans are using every ploy they can conceive of to take away access to health care from the 11.2 million people who have enrolled for 2018.  [That  figure was slightly lower than in 2017, but it was seen by ACA advocates as “robust,” because so many people signed up, despite the Trump administration doing everything it could depress enrollment by making it more difficult.]

Unfortunately, this assault is too easily buried under the daily deluge of shiny- object distractions flashed by the Trump Administration, and by the tsunami of revelations about corruption that dominate the daily news cycle. We need to stay vigilant.

The post The latest assault on ACA [Obamacare]: DOJ won’t defend it in court appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Donald Trump’s recent statements and tweets have created confusion and chaos in the health insurance market, just as open enrollment for ACA/Obamacare is about to begin, on November 1. He’s making it sound like he has killed Obamacare for good. He’s saying things like “Obamacare is dead. It’s over. You might as well not even mention it. There is no Obamacare.” But that is not true.

You can get health insurance for 2018 on the ACA/Obamacare exchanges. The program is still alive. The exchanges are still alive. You can still get health insurance with subsidized premiums. Trump would love for you to be confused and to just not even try. That would depress enrollment and help him sink the program that he hates—not because he understands its purpose, its workings, or how it affects individual people and the overall economy, but simply because it bears the name “Obama.”

So, do not be confused. Do not give up. Trump is doing everything he can to make you think that you can’t get health insurance for next year. And he’s not just talking: He has taken administrative action to make it harder for you to enroll. But you definitely can still enroll and get health coverage for 2018.

He has shortened the enrollment period from the customary three months to only six weeks. [Enrollment opens on Wednesday, November 1, 2017. It ends on December 15, 2017.] Pay attention to those dates. Don’t wake up on January 2 and say, “Gee, I should get healthcare insurance now. Oh, oops, I missed the deadline.” Trump would love for that to happen. Don’t let him fool you.

He has reduced—by 91 percent– the amount of money that will be spent on advertising the open enrollment period. So, you won’t be hearing as much about it, seeing as many ads, or getting much snail mail, email or social media contact about open enrollment. But you can still get health insurance for 2018 through the ACA.

He has reduced—by 41 percent overall—the amount of money that the government will pay to the non-government organizations who are most likely to reach out to people eligible for ACA/Obamacare enrollment — especially low-income people. Some of these groups have had their ACA/Obamacare outreach budgets slashed by as much as 90 percent. So you won’t be hearing as much from community organizations who used to remind you about open enrollment. But you can still get health insurance for 2018 through the ACA.

This vast reduction in funds has reduced the number of navigators who answer the ACA/Obamacare phones and help you work through the enrollment documents. You’re going to have to wait longer to connect with a navigator, and the person you talk with may not be as knowledgeable as those who had the job in previous years. But you can still get health insurance for 2018 through the ACA.

The big news last week was that Trump announced that he would immediately stop supporting the cost-sharing subsidies [CSR’s] that reimburse insurers for reducing deductibles and co-pays for lower income Obamacare enrollees. Until then, the administration had been paying these subsidies on a month-to-month basis.

But this huge act of Trumpian sabotage does not let insurer off the hook entirely. “Insurers must continue providing these cost-sharing discounts—even though they won’t be paid for them,” notes CNN. “That’s because the subsidies are required by the Affordable Care Act.”

So, if you qualify for premium subsidies—which are separate and unaffected by the CSR payments—you won’t have to pay much more, although you may need to switch plans to keep your rates steady. But you can still get health insurance for 2018 through ACA/Obamacare.

Trump’s moves will undoubtedly result in rate increases next year. So, your ACA/Obamacare insurance plan could cost more. But you can still get health insurance for 2018 through ACA/Obamacare, despite what Donald Trump would like you to think. ACA/Obamacare is not dead. If this is the year when you have decided to sign up,or if you need to look into a new plan, you should definitely explore your options at healthcare.gov.

The post Can you still get health insurance for 2018 via ACA/Obamacare? Yes, you can appeared first on Occasional Planet.

This year’s open enrollment period for ACA/Obamacare is from November 1, 2017 to December 15, 2017. That is a mere six weeks, compared to the three-month enrollment period available in all previous ACA years. Anyone — in any state — needing to sign up for ACA/Obamacare for 2018 needs to pay attention to the deadline. The Trump administration has:

• Cut the enrollment period in half
• Slashed advertising and outreach by 90%
• Chopped by 41% the dollars allocated to non-governmental groups who reach out to likely ACA enrollees
• Severely cut the number of ACA navigators available to help people enroll
• Is shutting down healthcare.gov “for maintenance” for 12 hours during all but one Sunday in the upcoming open enrollment season. Kaiser Health News reports that not only will the shutdowns occur from 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET every Sunday except December 10, but the Department of Health and Human Services will also shut down healthcare.gov overnight on the first day of open enrollment, November 1.

There’s only one way to describe these tactics: sabotage.

Having failed to kill ACA/Obamacare legislatively [more than 50 times], the Trump administration has embarked on a cynical scheme to undermine the program by making it harder to enroll. It’s a nasty plan that is gratuitously mean and vengeful. It in no way reflects what people actually want: A Pew Research poll shows that favorable views of ACA/Obamacare hit a new high in 2017. [It’s telling, isn’t it, that, essentially, all it took for ACA/Obamacare to reach its highest approval rating was for Barack Obama to leave office.]

People want ACA/Obamacare to stay. People who don’t get health insurance through their employers want it through the ACA’s state exchanges. And even the 56% of Americans who get their health insurance via work—want the provisions enacted in the Affordable Care Act [coverage for pre-existing conditions, essential health benefits, no lifetime limits, kids on the plan until age 26, etc.] Whether they admit it or not. Whether or not they realize that the Affordable Care Act [ACA] IS Obamacare. Even if they live in Mitch McConnell-land [Kentucky], where Obama-hating state legislators renamed ACA “Kynect Care” just so that people getting desirable Obamacare benefits would think that they were getting something else. [In 2016, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin killed Kynect Care, not because it wasn’t working, but because it was working too well. Kentuckians now get their health insurance via healthcare.gov.]

Making enrollment more difficult is a Republican dirty trick.

Potentially hundreds of thousands of people could wake up in January—having waited until close to the longer deadline they thought was in effect—to find that they’ve missed their chance to get health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Thousands more, encountering long waits on the phone, a shut-down healthcare.gov on the Sunday they chose to do their enrollment, or being assisted by less experienced, less informed navigators, may just give up out of frustration. And that’s exactly what the Trump administration and its Congressional-Republican enablers are hoping will happen. They want enrollment to be a hassle. They want people to miss the deadline. They are eager for people to quit the enrollment process because it’s slow and frustrating. Their goal is to shrink enrollment and thereby initiate the long-hoped for Obamacare death spiral, in which the program self-destructs.

These tactics dovetail beautifully with what many Republican legislators want — while obviating the need for them to actually vote on repeal. Newly resigned Director of Health and Human Services Tom Price, who is most certainly one of the plotters behind this Obamacare-sinking plan, can now just sit back and watch his hoped-for disaster unfold, while not having to take responsibility for it. It’s a perfect storm, if you are a soulless Republican meanie who enjoys full health insurance coverage paid for by the government.

It is hard to imagine a more perverse strategy.

We don’t want repeal/replace. We like the provisions of ACA/Obamacare. People have called, written, facebooked, texted, IM’d, sat-in, demonstrated, marched, protested, pleaded, and campaigned—again and again—to prevent the derailment of a program—imperfect as it may be in some of its provisions—that has made healthcare insurance possible for tens of millions who didn’t have it before, and that has dramatically improved coverage for people already insured through their employers. These are the people Congressional representatives and Senators are supposed to be representing. Instead, they are ignoring the human needs in their districts, elevating their own political needs, and kowtowing to financial blackmail by their fat-cat campaign donors.

This is sick.

Please remind everyone you know that ACA enrollment is different this year. The clock is ticking. Those of us who have health insurance cannot be complacent. If Republicans succeed in undermining ACA/Obamacare with this irresponsible, immature, immoral trickery, we will all suffer.

The post Signing up for ACA Obamacare? Republican sabotage makes it harder to enroll appeared first on Occasional Planet.

 “One Paragraph of Obamacare Saved this Boy’s Life,” tells the story of Timmy, a thriving, happy six-year-old who lives in Maryland with his sister and parents. Timmy was born seven weeks before his due date and spent the first five months of his life in a neonatal care unit. Timmy was born with a rare condition that requires him to breathe through a tube in his throat and receive most of his food through a tube in his abdomen.

Timmy’s daily routine of medical care, lovingly administered at home by his parents, is complicated and expensive. Without one life-saving paragraph in the Affordable Care Act that outlawed lifetime limits on insurance payments, Timmy’s parents would not have been able to afford his care. The truth is that without the Affordable Care Act Timmy would not be alive today.

Timmy’s medical condition may be rare but the tragic consequences he and his family might face if insurance-policy lifetime limits are re-imposed would be shared by countless other families and individuals across America.

The post VIDEO: THE HUMAN COST OF Replacing Obamacare appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Ok, ladies. Listen up. Maybe you voted in the 2016 election. Maybe you didn’t bother. Maybe you voted Hillary. Or maybe you wrote in for Bernie or gave your support to Trump. I’m not here to criticize or chastise. I just want to remind you – especially if you’re a woman still of child-bearing age – about exactly what was at stake concerning your health and the American health-care system in this election. I hate to say it but it’s looking increasingly like a miracle just isn’t going to materialize out of the ether and save us from the electoral college doing the dirty work of anointing the most unqualified, uninformed, impulsive, and temperamentally and intellectually unsuited individual to the presidency in our lifetimes..

I don’t like to be negative. But. What looks like an almost certain effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act by Republicans is looming just over the horizon. And contrary to the spin from Fox News and conservative talking heads, repeal is really, truly not going to yield anything good. Quite the contrary. As women, repeal is going to affect us disproportionately in profound and destructive ways. (What’s new about that? This is the oldest story there is.)

If you didn’t realize before November 8 just what’s on the line, at least pay attention now. This is about how the election of Trump and a Republican-dominated Congress and the expectation of an increasingly right-leaning Supreme Court might affect you and your body and the most important of your life and work choices for perhaps the next few decades.

But don’t listen to me. Ignore, if you like, my particular brand of seething anger and unhinged anxiety. Do yourselves a favor now and take a few moments to watch and learn from this video put together by the National Women’s Law Center.

Narrator Gretchen Borchelt is going to gently remind you that before the Affordable Care Act

Being a woman was a pre-existing condition and insurance companies could either deny you coverage or require you to pay more for your coverage

92% of insurance plans used a process called gender rating that meant that collectively women paid $1 billion more than men for coverage

19 million women were uninsured

Just 12% of insurance policies covered maternity care (family values, anyone?)

Full coverage of women’s preventive services, such as cancer screenings, was not required

Full coverage of birth control – considered health preventive services under the ACA – was non-existent

Just think of this one statistic if you want to understand what’s on the line for your lifestyle and financial security:

In one year alone, since enactment of the Affordable Care Act, women (hey, millennials, are you listening?) have saved $1.4 billion on the cost of birth-control pills alone.

Like I said. Listen and watch. Then decide. Are you going to sit this fight out? Or are you going to get involved and do something to protect yourself?

The post A must-see video: What ACA repeal will mean for women’s health appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I know people who have blasted Obamacare from the beginning, and refused to even acknowledge that there is anything good about it.

When I would mention all the positive things, like a ban on exclusion for pre-existing conditions, no lifetime limits, no more being kicked off your plan because you get sick, children staying on the plan until 26, an expansion of Medicaid, a prohibition on charging women more than men, free preventive healthcare, and millions of people getting insurance for the first time with the uninsured rate dropping to the lowest ever, they would brush off the importance of those and complain about increased deductibles and rising costs– which in most (not all) cases have been less than before Obamacare went in to effect.

To those of you who kept complaining about wanting the “free market” to rule, you are getting your wish. Here’s the rundown, via the Washington Post:  “Obamacare is probably toast. And a lot of poor, white Trump voters will get hurt by it.”

..the likely end result (again, at best) is that a lot of the 20 million people who would lose coverage due to repeal will remain without coverage, and protections for those with bad medical conditions will be eroded.

And if you are lucky enough to have insurance through work or can afford it on your own, enjoy watching others lose theirs. If you have any decency, I assume you will strongly support increasing taxes to pay for the rising cost of health care for poor and working class people.

The post Obamacare is probably toast: Trump voters will get hurt appeared first on Occasional Planet.