Obamacare Signups Sag and It’s Trump’s Fault?

The American Spectator reports:

Shortly following Donald Trump’s upset victory in November, the Obama administration and the legacy media began telling us that Obamacare enrollment was skyrocketing due to fear of the president-elect’s pledge to repeal the law. Three days after the election, for example, CNN produced this headline: “Obamacare sign-ups surge after Trump’s election.” Obama himself boasted in December about “the biggest day ever for Healthcare.gov.” Well, like everything else these people told us, this was hogwash. The actual signup numbers are in, and they are the lowest ever. What happened? CNN reports that the slump was caused by… er… Trump.

That’s right, the same “news” outlet that claimed fear of Trump was driving enrollments to record highs now says that the President is the cause of Obamacare’s worst signup year ever. And former Obama administration officials are singing the same refrain. The Hill reports, “A former Obama administration official estimates that nearly 500,000 people missed out on ObamaCare enrollment this year because of moves by the Trump administration.” This comes from Joshua Peck, former chief marketing officer for HealthCare.gov, who claims that Trump accomplished this dark deed by pulling a few ads at the end of the enrollment period.

This fiction ignores the outrageous premiums and deductibles that characterized the 2017 Obamacare plans. It also fails to acknowledge the paucity of choices offered by the exchanges. As the Daily Signal points out, “The Heritage Foundation finds that insurer competition in the Obamacare exchanges is worse than ever in 2017, with 70 percent of counties having only one or two insurers selling coverage.” This is nearly twice the number of counties that offered so few choices last year. Note to Mr. Peck and anyone else afflicted with economic illiteracy — when you raise prices (on health plans or widgets) while reducing choice, you get fewer buyers.

Cartelized medicine in the news.