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Papers, Please: There’s A New Front In The White House War Against Obamacare

Anne Zieger
4 min readAug 25, 2019

I was almost ejected from my health insurance by a system increasingly designed to drop consumers

Back in 2017, my husband and I became eligible to enroll in a Marketplace plan, the coverage made available through the Affordable Care Act. Yes, we’re talking about the nefarious Obamacare program that our Fearful Leader — in fact, the entire Republican party — is still trying desperately to kill.

Signing up for coverage was pretty easy. All I had to do was visit the Healthcare.gov site, looked at my options and chose a policy. When I finished signing up and paid for my first month of coverage I was almost giddy. No more turning over a mortgage-sized check each month for a COBRA plan larded with high copays and fees! A large part of my premium was covered by a subsidy provided for by the ACA.

I was far from alone. Despite direct attempts to sabotage the ACA (such as its successful effort to eliminate law’s penalty for failing to have health coverage) the number of consumers taking advantage of Obamacare’s premium subsidies has continued to grow, most recently from 8.2 million in 2017 to 8.6 million in 2018.

For years, the Marketplace plan worked beautifully. I had affordable health insurance and

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Anne Zieger
Anne Zieger

Written by Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger has been a writer for almost 30 years. She's interested in life, the universe and everything.

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