Its been reported that the trump administration had already taken steps to significantly damage Obamacare, otherwise referred to as the affordable care act (ACA) as soon as he first entered the Oval Office. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced on Thursday that they would be cutting funding for advertising for the upcoming open enrollment period next year. This is a follow-up to the action they took after Donald Trump became president, where his administration halted advertising that had already been paid for, causing enrollment to fall from last year's levels.

Administration cuts budget for ads and navigators

The drastic cuts means that the $100 million held for ads will now be reduced to $10 million instead, and rather than advertise on television or radio; ads will only run online, email, and in text messages. Navigators -- or organizations that help people sign up for coverage -- will no longer get the $61.5 million they're given by the federal government. The amount has now been cut down by 36 percent. To add, those organizations will now receive a percentage of the amount they expect to get for 2018 which will now be based off of a percentage of their performance.

President Trump threatened to stop funding insurance providers who signed up for the exchanges after Republicans in Congress failed to repeal and replace the ACA this year.

The president has attacked Republicans for not voting to repeal the health care law and its been opined that he would go it alone if he had to -- this being more likely, as President Trump has shown that he's capable of the worst, without consequences for his actions.

Pragmatic balance of killing and supporting healthcare law

Prior to the August recess, the secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, was asked about forcing the ACA to implode. But Price said that he would not interfere with the process. The administration has already been working to deregulate the healthcare law by themselves which does not need Congressional approval.

At the same time, the administration has been securing other processes that would still continue enrollment, even though they're planning to make drastic cuts. This could simply confirm what Tom Price said about letting the healthcare law implode.

Overall, even though it's likely that the president has learned a bit more about the ACA in the process of trying to kill it, he doesn't necessarily have to. With a cabinet that's capable of doing its worst, the Trump administration may fall into a cycle of maintaining the law as it stands at the beginning of 2018 -- since the ACA was already in motion before Trump's inauguration.

Democrats have reportedly been wanting to start an investigation into the misdirection of the money that should be used for advertising.

Specifically, their investigation would look into the administration taking the money and using it to buy advertising that attacked the program. But Congress also seems to be working on a plan to legislate on a bipartisan level where they can fix the ACA marketplace so it doesn't collapse.
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