Health insurance exchanges start fifth annual open enrollment period under ACA

Health insurance exchanges - American healthcare reforms

The Affordable Care Act is moving forward with its marketplaces despite repeated efforts by Republicans.

The last year has represented a consistent Republican effort to stop the health insurance exchanges from moving forward in the form they initially took through the Affordable Care Act. That said, despite the GOP’s attempts, the marketplaces have opened their doors for their fifth annual open enrollment season.

The 45 day long window to purchase health insurance opened on Wednesday morning with the start of November.

Now, eligible Americans across the country will be using the health insurance exchanges to purchase their coverage plans for 2018. The Federal version of the Affordable Care Act marketplace – HealthCare.gov – which is used by 39 states, launched with the heading “2018 Open Enrollment is here.”

The first four years of Obamacare came with a great deal of celebration and education-based marketing from the White House during the open enrollment period. However, this marks the first health plan shopping season with President Trump in Washington D.C. By mid-day Wednesday, he and his health care advisors released nothing more than an understated tweet from the Health and Human Services Department account on Tuesday, mentioning the open enrollment period.

This marks the quietest launch of the health insurance exchanges open enrollment period, to date.

Health insurance exchanges - American healthcare reformsFederal health officials have hacked into government spending for advertising and other education strategies focused on the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces. In fact, the budget for those efforts to inform Americans about their resources were slashed by 90 percent. This is only one of many strategies from Trump and the Republican party that are predicted to reduce the number of American citizens who will end up covered by health insurance in coming years.

During the last four years, enrollments saw notable increases, having dipped a little bit into 2017 to a figure of 12.2 million Americans. That droop was credited to Trump’s withdrawal of a substantial portion of the Affordable Care Act’s planned outreach campaign once he took office.

Surveys show that Americans are now quite confused about the health insurance exchanges due to the many recent changes the president has made to the Affordable Care Act’s regulations. That said, it is unlikely that the majority of them will be reached by education campaigns as the funding for those programs is now at one tenth of what it had been last year.

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