Health Care

Subtopics

Affordable Care Act

Timeline

2017.10.03	The House passed a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks, sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), which would make it a crime to perform or attempt an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, with the possibility of a fine, up to five years in prison or both. thehill.com (See also Women)
2017.10.05	With enrollment season on Nov. 1, the Health and Human Services Department has worked to suppress the number of people signing up by 1) slashing grants to groups that help consumers get insurance coverage, 2) cutting the enrollment period in half, 3) reducing the advertising budget by 90 percent, 4) announcing an outage schedule that would make the HealthCare.gov website significantly less available, and 5) not committing to funding the cost-sharing reductions that help 7 million lower income Americans afford out-of-pocket expenses. washingtonpost.com (See also Affordable Care Act, Assaults on Government)
2017.10.06	The Trump administration issued a rule that sharply limits the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage mandate, a move that could mean many American women would no longer have access to birth control free of charge. washingtonpost.com (See also Women, Department of Health and Human Services) The new regulation, issued by the Health and Human Services Department, allows a much broader group of employers and insurers to exempt themselves from covering contraceptives such as birth control pills on religious or moral grounds.
2017.10.12	Donald Trump ended subsidies to health insurance companies that help pay out-of-pocket costs of low-income people, after he ordered sweeping changes in the nation’s insurance system, which will send insurance premiums soaring, and insurance companies fleeing from the health law’s online marketplaces. nytimes.com (See also Unprecedented Actions, Unpresidential Behavior, Affordable Care Act)
2017.10.12	Donald Trump plans to cut off subsidy payments to insurers selling ACA coverage in his most aggressive move yet to undermine his predecessor's health care law. politico.com (See also Affordable Care Act)
2017.10.12	Eighteen U.S. states sued Donald Trump’s administration on Friday to stop him from scrapping a key component of Obamacare, subsidies to insurers that help millions of low-income people pay medical expenses. reuters.com (See also Affordable Care Act, Legal Issues)
2017.10.17	A pair of leading Republican and Democratic senators reached an agreement Tuesday to fund key federal health-care subsidies that Donald Trump literally just ended days ago, and yet the president expressed support for the plan. washingtonpost.com (See also Affordable Care Act, Unpresidential Behavior)
2017.10.18	Donald Trump backed away from his endorsement of a bipartisan Senate proposal to stabilize health insurance markets, throwing the legislative effort into doubt even as the chief architect of the deal predicted that it would become law before the end of the year. nytimes.com (See also Affordable Care Act, Unpresidential Behavior)
2017.10.20	The percentage of U.S. adults lacking health insurance rose in the third quarter of 2017 to 12.3%, up 0.6 percentage points from the previous quarter and 1.4 points since the end of 2016, which is the highest recorded rate since 3 years of success declines with the Affordable Care Act. news.gallup.com (See also Affordable Care Act)
2017.10.25	Premiums for the most popular “Obamacare” plans are going up an average of 34 percent, due to Trump administration’s actions which are adding instability to the underlying problems of the health law's marketplaces. apnews.com (See also Affordable Care Act)
2017.11.06	The Trump administration has prepared an executive order that would unravel Obamacare's individual mandate, but has put it on hold to see whether repealing the penalties for going uninsured might be included in the Republican tax bill instead. washingtonexaminer.com (See also Affordable Care Act)
2017.12.15	A federal court issued a preliminary injunction on Friday blocking a Trump administration rule on insurance coverage of contraceptives for women, saying the rule contradicts the text of the Affordable Care Act by allowing employers to opt out of providing contraceptive coverage if they have religious or moral objections. nytimes.com (See also Affordable Care Act, Women, Legal Issues)
2017.12.21	2 million children have lost health coverage starting in January since Congress didn't renew funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). nbcnews.com
2017.12.22	Almost 9 million people signed up for ACA coverage, slightly less than last year, but it had a shorter sign-up window, and its advertising budget was slashed by the Trump administration. axios.com (See also Affordable Care Act, Department of Health and Human Services)
2017.12.24	The Trump administration is scaling back the use of fines against nursing homes that harm residents or place them in grave risk of injury. nytimes.com (See also Corruption)
2017.12.25	Donald Trump admitted that Republicans sabotaged the Affordable Care Act in their tax cut bill, and told people not to discuss the repeal to the media. mic.com (See also Affordable Care Act, Unpresidential Behavior)
2017.12.29	Donald Trump fired the remaining members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, informing them without explanation with a letter delivered by FedEx, six months after six members resigned from PACHA writing in an open letter, published in Newsweek, saying the Trump White House was pushing for legislation that would harm people living with HIV. newsweek.com (See also Assaults on Government, LGBTQIA)
2018.01.19	The Trump administration announced it is rescinding guidance from the Obama administration that made it harder for states to defund Planned Parenthood. thehill.com (See also Women, Reversals)
2018.01.23	The Trump administration’s commission on the opioid crisis is a sham that will not produce meaningful public health outcomes, according to a member of said commision. splinternews.com (See also Kellyanne Conway, Affordable Care Act)
2018.01.24	Three groups are leading a lawsuit filed Wednesday against the Trump administration’s approval of major changes to Medicaid, including allowing work requirements. thehill.com (See also Legal Activity)
2018.01.26	Covered California, the state's ACA insurance exchange, has published the first estimates of what "Trumpcare" will cost in 2019, as premiums will increase by 16% to 30%. latimes.com (See also Affordable Care Act, Department of Health and Human Services)
2018.02.08	The Trump administration is working on new rules that would allow the government to keep immigrants from settling in the US, or even force them to leave, if their families had used a broad swath of local, state, or federal social services to which they’re legally entitled — even enrolling their US-born children in Head Start or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). vox.com (See also Immigration)
2018.05.01	Donald Trump's former top health official, Tom Price, said the Republican tax law would raise the cost of health insurance for some Americans because it repealed a core provision of the Affordable Care Act. washingtonpost.com (See also Tom Price, Department of Health and Human Services, Affordable Care Act)
2018.05.07	Donald Trump is sending a plan to Congress that calls for stripping more than $15 billion in previously approved spending, almost half of which would come from two accounts within the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that White House officials said expired last year or are not expected to be drawn upon. washingtonpost.com (See also Reversals, Economy, Affordable Care Act) An additional $800 million in cuts would come from money created by the Affordable Care Act in 2010 to test innovative payment and service delivery models.
2018.05.17	Clinics that provide abortions or refer patients to places that do would lose federal funding under a new Trump administration rule that takes direct aim at Planned Parenthood. nytimes.com (See also Women)