The other way you can beat Republicans this November: Enroll in the ACA
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It's that time again—in two weeks open enrollment in the Affordable Care Act opens. Despite eight years of Republican repeal efforts. Despite all of the unindicted co-conspirator's sabotage efforts. Obamacare lives and is still getting people covered. ForThe other way you can beat Republicans this November: Enroll in the ACA
It's that time again—in two weeks open enrollment in the Affordable Care Act opens. Despite eight years of Republican repeal efforts. Despite all of the unindicted co-conspirator's sabotage efforts. Obamacare lives and is still getting people covered. For those who need coverage, being ready on the November 1 opening date is recommended, because of course the administration is still doing its damnedest to limit the ability for people to access the site and secure coverage. That means scheduling hours of downtime for «maintenance» during weekends, from Saturday at midnight to Sunday at noon, when many people have the time to do the researching and shopping. The administration is touting a 1.5 percent average decrease in premiums for 2019, claiming credit that changes they made in the law account for it. In some sense that's true—the sabotage they tried last year in ending payments to insurers made those insurers raise premiums significantly for this year, and this year's decreases are an adjustment to account for that. But, Sarah Lueck, senior policy analyst for the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that «Premiums would have dropped more on average if not for harmful Trump administration actions.» It's also not the whole story, as our friend and colleague Charles Gaba notes. The administration did some real cherry-picking to define that decrease. Premiums next year will «still be a whopping 30% higher than they were in 2017, with the vast bulk of that due specifically to sabotage actions taken by the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans,» he writes. (As always, follow Gaba to learn the nitty-gritty of everything ACA.) There's another thing to be wary of, though, this year: Trump's new fake plans. Those needing real coverage will have to watch out for the non-ACA compliant, cheap short-term and association health plans, neither of which have to comply with all the consumer protections in the law. If it seems like too good of a deal to be true, it is. They won't show up on the ACA exchanges either run by the federal government or the states, but will show up in web searches, and it won't always be clear that they're not real ACA-approved plans that will provide real coverage. So don't forget—in addition to voting and helping get out the vote for November, you can help people get insured and keep the ACA strong. Please give $1 to our Senate and House candidates to make Republicans pay the price for sabotaging our health care. Read more