In case you think these are isolated events, there happen to be surprisingly frequent..
Quote:For the past three years, the US Health and Human Services Department has partnered with a health advocacy group in Mississippi on an education tour before Obamacare enrollment started. They would meet around the states with groups that sign people up for coverage — state officials, health centers, insurance brokers, and the like — to prepare for open enrollment.Trump administration abruptly drops out of Obamacare events in Mississippi - Vox
Up until Monday, Roy Mitchell, executive director of the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program, thought these events were going forward in the coming weeks as planned. He had even asked HHS just last week for biographies of the officials they’d be sending. But then two days ago, he received a short message from an agency official, which Mitchell shared with Vox: HHS wouldn’t be doing any Obamacare marketplace events in the South this year. No further explanation was provided. “HHS bailing out was the last straw for us,” Mitchell told me by phone Wednesday. “It’s clearly sabotage.”
The department responded to Vox’s inquiry about the change in part by criticizing the law it is responsible for overseeing...
The Trump administration has already cut this year’s open enrollment period in half. It slashed spending on advertising by 90 percent. Funding for the navigators program, which went to groups that helped people sign up for insurance, was reduced by 40 percent and then allowed to lapse entirely.
With Obamacare facing an uncertain future on so many fronts — over its repeal, over the payment of key subsidies, over the enforcement of the individual mandate — HHS has added the apparent undermining of open enrollment to the plate. A key part of the law is the outreach and education that happens every fall, encouraging young and healthy people to enroll and letting Americans know what assistance is available to them. The Trump administration is cutting back sharply on these efforts — an act people like Mitchell have labeled “sabotage.”
But then there have been less obvious tactics that still undermine the law. Talking Points Memo reported recently that HHS had abandoned an outreach partnership with Hispanic groups that the Obama administration had started. Dropping out of the events in Mississippi is in a similar vein.
“HHS is a big draw in terms of these meetings. I think it was highly beneficial to hear the policy directly from HHS,” Mitchell said. “Certainly we can go forward, but frankly it was an attempt at collaboration.”