Democrats have made the charge that President Trump and Republicans have engaged in “sabotage” of Obamacare a central part of their argument in the upcoming midterm elections, but on Wednesday the Census Bureau released new data that has undermined their case.
In 2017, Trump’s first year in office, the uninsured rate was unchanged from President Obama’s last year in office, at 8.8 percent, according to the Census Bureau, which is the closest we have to an official coverage number. That means that 91.2 percent of Americans have health insurance coverage.
Various actions of the Trump administration, such as slashing the ad and outreach budget for Obamacare and ending certain payments to insurers, have been used by Democrats to charge that the Trump administration has launched a concerted effort to sabotage the law. But that is not visible in the numbers.
Even looking at a further breakdown of the numbers shows small shifts among various types of coverage that can easily be explained by broader factors.
For instance, the percentage of insured Americans on Medicare ticked up to 17.2 percent from 16.7 percent, but that can easily be explained by another wave of baby boomers retiring. Economic growth meant more people with jobs, which could easily explain why Medicaid and directly-purchased insurance coverage went down slightly and employment-based coverage ticked up. (Specifically, Medicaid went to 19.3 percent from 19.4 percent; direct-purchase insurance went to 16 percent from 16.2 percent; and employment-based coverage ticked up to 56 percent from 55.7 percent).
There, are, of course, counterarguments that Democrats could make. Not all of Trump’s actions have gone into effect, Republicans failed to fully repeal Obamacare, and the report does not reflect any effects of the repeal of the individual mandate penalties (a change that doesn’t go into effect until 2019).
That having been said, early signs are that increases in Obamacare plans are shaping up to be relatively modest for the 2019 coverage year, and insurers have indicated that they now don’t think the end of the penalties will have much of an impact.
Either way, as it plays out in an election scenario, this news gives Republicans a more straightforward counterargument against Democratic attacks of “sabotage.” Had there been a significant dip, it would have bolstered Democrats’ case. Now Republicans can argue that despite all of the apocalyptic warnings, the uninsured rate is the same under Trump as it was under Obama.
