As ACA enrollment nears, TRUMP admin keeps cutting federal support of the law-Pure Sabotage!!
The article talks about other states as well. Good article.
I am feeling rather hopeless as of late. So much corruption and sabotage from trump and his minions--every day it seems something else it added to his agenda to undercut services and denigrate our land, air, water!
As ACA enrollment nears, administration keeps cutting federal support of the law
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/politics/as-aca-enrollment-nears-administration-keeps-cutting-federal-support-of-the-law/2017/10/05/cc5995a2-a50e-11e7-b14f-f41773cd5a14_story.html
By Juliet Eilperin
October 5, 2017 at 6:12 PM
For months, officials in Republican-controlled Iowa had sought federal permission to revitalize their ailing health-insurance marketplace. Then President Trump read about the request in a newspaper story and called the federal director weighing the application.
Trump's message in late August was clear, according to individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations: Tell Iowa no.
Supporters of the Affordable Care Act see the president's opposition even to changes sought by conservative states as part of a broader campaign by his administration to undermine the 2010 health-care law. In addition to trying to cut funding for the ACA, the Trump administration also is hampering state efforts to control premiums. In the case of Iowa, that involved a highly unusual intervention by the president himself.
And with the fifth enrollment season set to begin Nov. 1, advocates say the Health and Human Services Department has done more to suppress the number of people signing up than to boost it. HHS has slashed grants to groups that help consumers get insurance coverage, for example. It also has cut the enrollment period in half, reduced the advertising budget by 90 percent and announced an outage schedule that would make the HealthCare.gov website less available than last year.
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HHS has told its regional administrators not to even meet with on-the-ground organizations about enrollment. The late decision, ............................................................... left leaders of grass-roots organizations feeling stranded.
"I don't think it's too much to ask the agency tasked with outreach and enrollment to be involved with that," said Roy Mitchell, executive director for the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program, which receives no federal funding for its ACA efforts. "There's money for HHS to fly around on private jets, but there's not money and resources to do outreach in Mississippi." ..................................
Seema Verma, who heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was told by the president to deny changes that Iowa officials were proposing in their Affordable Care Act marketplace — another administration move to undermine the law, ACA supporters say. (Pete Marovich/Bloomberg)
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