Obamacare Is on the Ropes—Again
With open-enrollment numbers slipping, the Republican tax plan gaining steam, and CHIP still in limbo, critical elements of health-insurance programs are in danger.
It’s been two months since the last major push to repeal the Affordable Care Act died in the Senate, but the law is still on the ropes. Republican efforts to stymie the law and dismantle connected pieces of the national health infrastructure are taking their toll. With or without a full repeal, policy developments on the horizon could topple Obamacare, causing millions to lose coverage or see their health-care costs increase beyond their ability to pay.
Very few pieces of the health law aren’t vulnerable right now. To start, it turns out that despite of “surges” in sign-ups on HealthCare.gov, the federal-exchange website, at the beginning of the open-enrollment period in November, overall uptake might still be anemic compared with
