NATION/WORLD
East Oregonian
Page 8A
Saturday, December 23, 2017
More than 4 in 5 enrolled in ‘Obamacare’ are in Trump states
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Americans
in states that Donald Trump carried
in his march to the White House
account for more than 4 in 5 of
those signed up for coverage under
the health care law the president
still wants to take down.
An Associated Press analysis of
new figures from the government
found that 7.3 million of the 8.8
million consumers signed up so
far for next year come from states
Trump won in the 2016 presidential
election. The four states with the
highest number of sign-ups —
Florida, Texas, North Carolina and
Georgia, accounting for nearly
3.9 million customers — were all
Trump states.
“There’s politics, and then
there’s taking care of yourself and
your family,” said analyst Chris
Sloan of the consulting firm Avalere
Health. “You can have political
views about a program like the
Affordable Care Act, but when you
get an opportunity to get subsidized
health insurance for you and your
family ... politics is a distant consid-
eration.”
AP’s analysis found that 11 states
beat 2017’s enrollment figures.
Of them, eight —Iowa, Kansas,
Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska,
North Dakota, South Dakota and
Wyoming— went for Trump, who
posted double-digit victories in all
but Iowa.
To be sure, Trump states are also
home to many people who voted
for Democrat Hillary Clinton.
But the AP’s analysis points to a
pattern of benefits from the health
law in states the president won. The
premium dollars have economic
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
In this Oct. 12 file photo, President Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order on health
care in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington.
ripple effects, reimbursing hospitals
and doctors for services that might
otherwise have gone unpaid and
written off as bad debt. Also, people
with health insurance are better
able to manage chronic medical
problems, remaining productive,
tax-paying members of society.
Such economic and political
realities will be in the background
when Congress returns in January to
another installment of the nation’s
long-running debate over health
care. Republicans and Democrats
seem to have battled to a draw for
now.
The year 2019 — the effective
date for repeal of the ACA’s
requirement that most people have
coverage — is looking like a time
of reckoning for the law’s insurance
markets, which offer subsidized
private plans to people who don’t
have job-based coverage.
Unexpectedly strong enrollment
numbers announced this week for
the 39 states served by the federal
HealthCare.gov website testify to
consumer demand for the program
and its guarantee that people with
medical problems can’t be turned
away. Yet those numbers still lag
behind last season’s sign-up total.
It’s unclear what the final count
and called the bill “something I’m
very proud of.”
Then, with no legislators on
hand, he offered to distribute pens
from his signing event to reporters
assembled in the Oval Office.
Clearly feeling some end-of-year
cheer, the president who loves to
decry “fake news” gave reporters
and camera crews credit for
“working very hard” and said, “We
really appreciate that.”
Starting next year, the new tax
law will deliver big cuts to wealthy
Ameiricans and corporations,
and more modest reductions to
other families. The tax law is the
largest since 1986, but far from the
biggest in American history, as the
president repeatedly claims.
leaning states providing many of
the key votes.
The stopgap legislation will
keep the government from
closing down at midnight Friday.
It traversed a tortured path,
encountering resistance from the
GOP’s most ardent allies of the
military, as well as opposition
from Democrats who demanded
but were denied a vote on giving
immigrants brought to the country
as children and in the country
illegally an opportunity to become
citizens.
The wrap-up measure
allows Republicans controlling
Washington to savor their win
on this week’s $1.5 trillion tax
package — even as they kick
a full lineup of leftover work
into the new year. Congress will
return in January facing enormous
challenges on immigration,
the federal budget, health care
and national security along
with legislation to increase the
government’s authority to borrow.
for next year will be. HealthCare.
gov numbers released Thursday
are incomplete, and some states
running their own insurance
websites will continue enrolling
people throughout January.
Separately, actions by the Trump
administration and the GOP-led
Congress are creating incentives
for healthy people to stay out of the
health law’s insurance markets.
Starting in 2019, people won’t
have to worry about incurring a fine
from the IRS for being uninsured,
because the tax overhaul repeals
that mandate. At the same time, the
administration is taking regulatory
action to open a path for the sale of
low-cost insurance plans that don’t
provide the health law’s benefits or
guarantees.
“The real worry for me is what
the health plans do,” said Sloan.
“If they decide that without the
mandate it’s not worth staying in
this market, you could end up with
swaths of the country having no
insurers.”
Bipartisan legislation to stabilize
insurance markets is still alive in
Congress, but its prospects are
unclear.
On Friday, Trump said he thinks
repealing the mandate as part of the
tax overhaul “ultimately leads to the
end of Obamacare.” The president
continued to ignore other parts of
the law that remain untouched by
the tax bill, including its Medicaid
expansion benefiting low-income
adults and the popular protections
for people with pre-existing condi-
tions.
Others say a corner has been
turned in the health care debate,
but where it will end up is still
uncertain.
Former
President
Barack
Obama’s law “is more durable and
important to Americans in terms of
getting affordable health insurance
than even its advocates expected,”
said John McDonough, a professor
at the Harvard T.H. Chan School
of Public Health, who served as an
adviser to Senate Democrats during
the ACA debate more than seven
years ago.
“With the end of the attempts
to bring it down and to repeal it,
perhaps there will be opportunities
in the near future to try to actually
build up and improve it, because it
could use some work,” he added.
BRIEFLY
Trump signs tax cut in
“rush job” Oval Office
signing event
WASHINGTON (AP) — In
the end, Donald Trump’s top
achievement as president— a
$1.5 trillion tax overhaul — was
finalized in a “rush job” of an
affair. And that was OK with him.
None of the members of
Congress who muscled through the
biggest tax overhaul in 30 years
were in the Oval Office on Friday
as Trump signed the measure into
law. That’s because the president
was not pleased with news
coverage that morning questioning
whether he would get the bill
signed before Christmas. So he
ordered up a spur-of-the-moment
signing event where he ticked
through what he described as the
“tremendous” accomplishments of
his first year in office.
“This is the capper,” Trump said
of the tax package, using his last
moments of the year in the White
House to sign the bill before flying
to Florida for the holidays. He also
signed a temporary spending bill
to keep the government running
and provide money to upgrade the
nation’s missile defenses.
But the tax cut was at the top
of Trump’s mind after months of
struggling to deliver his agenda
through a Republican-controlled
Congress. Trump on Friday
thanked the absent GOP leaders
Trump signs stopgap
spending bill into law
to avert shutdown
WASHINGTON (AP) —
President Donald Trump signed a
temporary spending bill into law
on Friday to avert a government
shutdown after the Republican-led
Congress did the bare minimum
in a sprint toward the holidays and
punted disputes on immigration,
health care and the budget to next
year.
The measure had passed the
House on Thursday on a 231-188
vote over Democratic opposition
and then cleared the Senate, 66-32,
with Democrats from Republican-
Bundy mistrial draws
Sessions probe, calls
for broad review
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A
mistrial in the federal prosecution
of a family of ranchers who led an
armed standoff against government
agents prompted Attorney
General Jeff Sessions to launch
an investigation into the case and
renewed calls for a broad review of
U.S. attorneys in Las Vegas.
“You can bet that, suddenly,
Sessions is asking, ‘Who’s our U.S.
attorney in Nevada?’” Rory Little,
a professor at the University of
California Hastings College of the
Law in San Francisco, said Friday.
“And somebody says, ‘Well, we
don’t have one.’ And they put it on
a fast-track.”
Nevada has been without a top
federal prosecutor since March,
when Sessions, President Donald
Trump’s appointee, sought the
resignations of 46 U.S. attorneys
remaining from Barack Obama’s
administration.
The acting U.S. attorney led the
troubled prosecution against states’
rights activist Cliven Bundy, his
two sons and another man in the
2014 confrontation that stopped a
federal roundup of Bundy cattle
from public lands.
The case has local defense
lawyers urging a review of the
U.S. attorney’s office in Nevada.
Big federal cases have collapsed in
the last 15 years over prosecutors’
failure to share evidence with
defendants.
UN Security Council
imposes new sanctions
on North Korea
UNITED NATIONS (AP)
— The U.N. Security Council
unanimously approved tough new
sanctions against North Korea
on Friday in response to its latest
launch of a ballistic missile that
Pyongyang says is capable of
reaching anywhere on the U.S.
mainland.
The resolution adopted by the
council includes sharply lower
limits on North Korea’s refined
oil imports, the return home of all
North Koreans working overseas
within 24 months, and a crackdown
on ships smuggling banned items
including coal and oil to and from
the country.
But the resolution
doesn’t include even harsher
measures sought by the Trump
administration that would ban all
oil imports and freeze international
assets of the government and its
leader, Kim Jong Un.
The resolution, drafted by the
United States and negotiated with
the North’s closest ally China,
drew criticism from Russia for
the short time the 13 other council
nations had to consider the draft,
and last-minute changes to the
text. Two of those changes were
extending the deadline for North
Korean workers to return home
from 12 months to 24 months
— which Russia said was the
minimum needed — and reducing
the number of North Koreans being
put on the U.N. sanctions blacklist.
President Donald Trump
tweeted the 15-0 vote, adding:
“The World wants Peace, not
Death!”
PLASTIC IS NO LONGER RECYCLABLE
WHAT:
Mixed plastics #1-#7 is no longer recyclable. Our depot collection containers
for this material near Fallen Field and at the Transfer Station will be removed
on or before January 1, 2018.
WHY:
The only market for these materials was China. Eff ective January 1,
2018 China is implementing its “National Sword” policy to increase the
environmental quality in its own country, which will stop all mixed paper
and mixed plastics from being imported. This is a national and international
issue, but the eff ects are very local. There are no markets to absorb what
China has refused to accept.
WHEN: By January 1, 2018 the plastics collection containers will be removed and
these plastics must be placed in the trash. Plastic water bottles and many
other drink containers may still be taken for the $0.10 redemption at grocery
stores or redemption centers.
WHO:
All Pendleton residents and surrounding areas who use Pendleton Sanitary
Service recycling collection containers.
OTHER COMMUNITIES: Other communities that have “co-mingled” recycling (all
recyclables in one roll cart at their home) will be very severely impacted by
these market changes. Pendleton’s impact is small in comparison.
WHAT CAN I DO?: Continue to recycle whenever and whatever is possible. Recycling
is still the right thing to do – it saves energy, natural resources, and creates
a sustainable future, but be very careful about contamination. If an item
is questionable for recycling - “When in doubt, throw it out” is the best
policy. For complete recycling information, please visit our website at
pendletonsanitaryservice.com or call our offi ce at (541) 276-1271.
Pendleton Sanitary Service, Inc. is committed to off ering a recycling
collection program supported by our customers and turning this diffi cult
situation into an opportunity to strengthen the future of recycling. If
markets for recycled plastics become available in the future, we are
committed to reinstate our collection of plastics and adapt to
current market conditions.
LOCATION: 5500 NW Rieth Road • Pendleton, OR 97801
PHONE: (541) 276-1271 • OFFICE HOURS: Mon - Fri: 8 AM - 4 PM
EastOregonian.com
A Benefit For Subscribers
Your subscription includes unlimited access to
EastOregonian.com so you can read the latest
news anytime, anywhere.
It’s easy to access!
Call 1-800-522-0255, ext. 1 Monday through Friday
8 a.m.– 5 p.m. and we’ll help you set up your
EastOregonian.com login.
Or go to EastOregonian.com and click on “Register”
in the upper lefthand corner to activate your online
subscription for the first time.
Questions?
Call, email circulation@eastoregonian.com or stop by
211 SE Byers Ave. in Pendleton, or 333 E. Main St. in
Hermiston during business hours.