Biden opens sign-up window for uninsured as COVID-19 rages

WASHINGTON (AP):

President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered government health insurance markets to reopen for a special sign-up window, offering uninsured Americans a haven as the spread of COVID-19 remains dangerously high and vaccines are not yet widely available.

Biden signed an executive order directing the HealthCare.gov insurance markets to take new applications for subsidised benefits, something Donald Trump’s administration had refused to do. He also instructed his administration to consider reversing other Trump healthcare policies, including curbs on abortion counselling and the imposition of work requirements for low-income people getting Medicaid.

RESTORING MEDICAID

“There’s nothing new that we’re doing here other than restoring the Affordable Care Act and restoring Medicaid to the way it was before Trump became president,” Biden said as he signed the directives in the Oval Office. He declared he was reversing “my predecessor’s attack on women’s health”.

The actions were only the first steps by Biden, who has promised to build out former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law to achieve a goal of coverage for all. While Biden rejects the idea of a government-run system that Senator Bernie Sanders has pushed for in his ‘Medicare for All’ proposal, his more centrist approach will require congressional buy-in. But opposition to ‘Obamacare’ runs deep among Republicans.

The most concrete short-term impact of Biden’s orders will come from reopening HealthCare.gov insurance markets, as coverage has shrunk in the economic turmoil of the coronavirus pandemic. That is an executive action and no legislation is required.

The new “special enrolment period” will begin February 15 and run through May 15, the White House said. It will be coupled with a promotional campaign and a call for states that run their own insurance markets to match the federal sign-up opportunity.

The Biden administration has ample resources for marketing, said Karen Pollitz, a health insurance expert with the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation. The foundation estimates that the Trump administration left unspent about $1.2 billion in user fees collected from insurers to help pay for running the marketplaces.