{"id":36108,"date":"2017-11-07T14:59:40","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T22:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=36108"},"modified":"2017-11-07T15:04:15","modified_gmt":"2017-11-07T23:04:15","slug":"obamacare-signups-breaking-records-despite-trumps-sabotage-and-declaring-it-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=36108","title":{"rendered":"ObamaCare Signups Breaking Records Despite Trump’s Sabotage and Declaring it Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month Donald Trump gave a definitive assessment of what he considered the status of ObamaCare. “ObamaCare is finished,”<\/em> he began. “It’s dead. It’s gone. It’s no longer – You shouldn’t even mention it, it’s gone. There is no such thing as ObamaCare anymore.”<\/em> Never mind that he sounded like the Monty Python sketch about the deceased parrot<\/a><\/strong>. In this case, the departed bird is actually showing signs of life.<\/p>\n

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In fact, the number of people signing up for the Affordable Care Act this year is exceeding all records. It’s still the first week of open enrollment, but this surge is an unmistakably positive sign. As reported in The Hill<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

“The surge in sign-ups, which was confirmed by an administration official, comes despite fears from Democrats that enrollment would fall off due to the Trump administration’s cutbacks in outreach and advertising.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“On the first day of enrollment alone, Nov. 1, one source close to the process told The Hill that more than 200,000 people selected a plan for 2018, compared with about 100,000 last year. More than 1 million people visited healthcare.gov that day, compared to about 750,000 last year, the source said.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In one respect these numbers should not be all that surprising. The polls show that ObamaCare has an overwhelmingly positive approval rating. When asked if Trump should make the ACA work<\/a><\/strong> seventy-one percent said that he should. That includes a plurality (48%) of Republicans.<\/p>\n

Which makes it all the more puzzling that Trump and the GOP are trying so hard to kill the program. They attempted three separate votes to do so, and all failed. So Trump took it upon himself to try to sabotage the healthcare plan. Among the steps he took to deliberately destroy a popular policy:<\/p>\n