Americans defy GOP repeal scheme, sign up for Obamacare in record numbers

At the behest of a group of far-right senators, GOP leadership inserted repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate into the Senate tax bill.

The idea is that because this move will collapse insurance markets and cause 13 million people to lose their health care, the federal government will have to pay out billions less in tax subsidies to help people buy Obamacare plans over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office — and the savings could be used to pay for even deeper tax cuts for corporations and millionaires.

The bottom line is that Republicans are trying once again, under cover of darkness, to repeal Obamacare after their bills were repeatedly destroyed by public outrage and pressure.

And now, with open enrollment season in full swing, it is clearer than ever that the American people want not only to keep Obamacare, but expand it.

https://twitter.com/topherspiro/status/928672819071848451

Despite Donald Trump’s repeated, unilateral attempts to sabotage open enrollment, Americans are signing up for Obamacare at record rates. In just the first 11 days, 1.5 million people enrolled  — and nearly 350,000 of them are first-time enrollees, a 40 percent increase from this point last year.

Open enrollment is not the only sign of Obamacare’s widespread popularity.

In Maine, voters overwhelmingly backed the referendum to expand Medicaid, which their Republican governor, Paul LePage, has spent eight years resolutely refusing to do.

Meanwhile, Trump’s move to end no-copay birth control coverage has faced fierce opposition, with lawsuits working through federal courts, and the first private organization that announced it would drop birth control — the University of Notre Dame — backtracking after fury from students.

Republicans should have taken the hint that the American people do not want them to repeal affordable health insurance after millions of grassroots activists spent months bringing down every bill they tried to put up for a vote. It is time for those activists to come together to defeat this latest attempt as well — and end the GOP’s fetishized, glorified millionaire tax kickback once and for all.