One of the Republic Party’s ultimate goals has always been to repeal the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare. Recently, the GOP’s new tax plan includes a repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, an obvious attempt to undo the healthcare act since Congress has not agreed on a new healthcare bill. However, despite the barrage of attacks on the longtime healthcare insurance, 8.8 million new subscribers have enrolled in Obamacare. The number is even more astonishing considering President Trump cut enrollment season in half, ending on December 15th rather than January 31st. Furthermore, the Trump administration drastically decreased the Obamacare advertisement budget.
In fact, Trump had previously believed the new tax plan had essentially repealed Obamacare.
“When the individual mandate is being repealed, that means Obamacare is repealed. Because they get their money from the individual mandate. So the individual mandate is being repealed. So in this bill, not only do we have massive tax cuts and tax reform, we have essentially repealed Obamacare and will come up with something that will be much better, ” Trump said in a press release with reporters before a Cabinet meeting
Yet even with the individual mandate, so many people enrolled for Obamacare, 1 million alone in the last week. This is a sign that there is ongoing interest and, more importantly, a need for the program that has been so divisive. Obamacare provides health insurance to those who do not receive coverage from their jobs if it were to be repealed 32 million people would lose coverage. Thankfully, the numbers are higher than anticipated and expected to rise due to late sign-ups from the Mid-west and West that have yet to be added.
“This level of enrollment is truly remarkable, especially given the headwinds faced by the program,” said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
The people have spoken and will continue to speak out against the repeal of Obamacare, for the sake of millions of lives.
