Despite Donald Trump and the GOP’s dogged attempts to throw salt on Obamacare, early data shows that Americans are signing up for it in record numbers.
The Hill reports that on Nov. 1, the first day of open enrollment, 200,000 Americans signed up for a 2018 health care plan—double last year’s first-day signup of 100,000.
There was also a record number of visits to HealthCare.gov on Nov. 1. The site logged in over 1 million visitors on the first day of enrollment, compared to 750,000 visits in 2016.
However, The Hill notes that it’s still too early to tell what the final enrollment numbers will look like.
Thanks to the Trump administration, the window to sign up for health insurance is about half as long as last year’s. The site is also scheduled to shut down during select hours on Sundays. The Hill adds that those early sign-up numbers are likely to reflect people re-upping their coverage rather than new enrollees.
Still, the record numbers are encouraging in light of the discord and confusion Trump and the GOP have tried to sow around healthcare. Trump slashed the outreach budget for Obamacare by 90 percent this year. The White House also cut spending on health care navigators, counselors who helped customers decide which insurance was best suited for them, by about 40 percent.
Finally, Trump signed two high-profile executive orders last month that rolled back key parts of the Affordable Care Act, including insurance subsidies for low-income families, leading him to pronounce Obamacare “dead.”
But that was a lie. Even with Trump’s orders, the Affordable Care Act remains the law of the land. And as the early numbers seem to show, many Americans know that.
Read more at The Hill.
