Although President Donald Trump’s feelings about Obamacare are painfully clear, the numbers just don’t lie. The New York Times reports that last week, in the first week of open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act, more than 600,000 people signed up for health care under the Act—absolutely trumping the numbers from previous years.
“Obamacare is finished,” said Trump at a cabinet meeting last month, according to the Times. “It’s dead. It’s gone. It’s no longer—you shouldn’t even mention. It’s gone. There is no such thing as Obamacare anymore.”
Despite Trump’s strong assertions about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and his repeated attempts to undermine Obamacare over the past month, a report on the first four days of open enrollment shows that 601,462 people chose health plans in the federal marketplace HealthCare.gov on Thursday, according to the Trump administration. Sign-ups averaged at more than 150,000 a day last week, more than doubling the first week of average sign-ups in previous years. In the first week of open enrollment in November 2014, sign-ups averaged at only 66,000 a day, while the average raised to 77,600 sign-ups a day in the first week of November 2015, according to the Times. Last fall, the Obama administration reported data every other week, and the first report showed an average of 84,000 sign-ups a day.
It’s almost as if Trump’s persistence in undermining Obamacare put the nail in his own coffin, not Obamacare’s.
“There’s a strong need among families in Utah for health insurance,” Matthew Slonaker, the executive director of the Utah Health Policy Project, said. “There’s been a threat to take away that option. People respond to threats. Perhaps there’s no such thing as bad publicity. All the talk about health care in the year since the election has been good advertising for the Affordable Care Act.”
Another huge component that has been closely monitored is the number of new customers signing up for health insurance, as it’s used as an indicator of public interest in the marketplace, according to the Times. The number of new customers selecting health plans averaged 34,300 sign-ups a day last week, compared to 26,400 in the first week in 2015 and 20,500 last fall. Overall, 137,322 of the 601,462 consumers who signed up last week were new to the marketplace.
Sorry (not sorry), Trump, but actions speak volumes, and the number of people signing up for Obamacare this year is absolutely deafening.