Jerry Knirk: How Trump’s orders sabotage health care

There is more chaos in the health-care arena with President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders. Trump continues to maintain that Obamacare is a disaster and has imploded. Much of the chaos is caused by his decision not to pay the cost-sharing reduction subsidies and direct sabotage of the health-care exchanges. He has shortened the sign-up period on the health-care exchanges, markedly cut marketing costs to publicize the sign up period, and has decided to shut the site down for a time each weekend even though it has been running fine.

If we move beyond rhetoric and look at the data, we see that national health-care expenditures have been rising in nearly a straight line for decades. Health-care inflation for the last two years under the ACA continues to be much lower than it was for decades. The average deductible paid by employees went up in a straight line from 2006 to 2015 — no change after the ACA. The ACA did not wreck health care. In fact, the millions of people who obtained coverage for the first time through the ACA are quite happy with their ability to access health care.