Biden Demands Trump to Stop the ‘Pettiness’ and Reopen Obamacare

Former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden demanded that the Trump administration reopen enrollment in the Affordable Care Act health insurance exchanges, as millions of Americans-many of them newly unemployed-face the prospect of enduring the coronavirus pandemic without access to healthcare.

"During this outbreak, when health care coverage is more important than ever, Donald Trump is refusing to give those who have been uninsured access to the best resource we have: the Affordable Care Act's marketplaces," Biden said in an exclusive statement to The Daily Beast, in which he called it "critical" that Trump reverse his opposition to reopening the Healthcare.gov federal health care exchange for a special enrollment period.

"This is no time to put pettiness and ideology above helping those who are in the greatest need," Biden said, calling the spread of the novel coronavirus "the worst public health crisis in generations"-one for which the president failed to prepare the nation, "despite warning after warning."

Biden's statement reflects the fervent desire among many Democrats to make health insurance expansion a policy priority as the coronavirus continues to spread across the country and dislodges millions of people from their workplaces. Trump has faced mounting pressure to allow for a special enrollment period so that individuals who don't have insurance can purchase it.

Last week, Trump told reporters that reopening the exchanges in light of the unique and dire circumstances was "something we're talking to a lot of people about." By this week, however, the administration had rejected the idea, dumbfounding health officials, insurers, and various others who'd hoped they would, or expected them to do so.

In meetings at the White House in the time between his stated consideration and his announced rejection of the idea, Trump on multiple occasions had referred to Obamacare as "a failure," and questioned why the administration should bother helping to prop it up, according to a source with direct knowledge of his private remarks.

And during a press briefing on Thursday, Trump reaffirmed that he was against leaning on Obamacare exchanges to help the uninsured get coverage in light of a growing pandemic. The president told reporters that he had a supposedly "better" idea.

"We are going to get a cash payment to the people and we are working out the mechanics of that with the legislature," he said. "So we are going to try and get them a cash payment because just opening it up doesn't help as much, so we're going to work it out... for that certain group of people a cash payment."

But the term "cash payment" confused even some of the president's own White House officials-two of whom messaged The Daily Beast while the press briefing was still ongoing that they had no idea what Trump meant by "cash payment" in lieu of enrollment. One senior official joked that they had not, in fact, heard about any proposals floated internally to airdrop "bags of cash" to people who'd just lost their jobs and health insurance.

When The Daily Beast asked the president Thursday night what he meant by delivering "cash payment" to offset loss of coverage, Trump stared blankly before quickly kicking it over to Vice President Mike Pence to try to explain the confusing new announcement. Pence's answer, however, related to funding hospital treatment of coronavirus victims, not to any direct cash payments to workers seeking healthcare.

Asked during Friday's briefing about how federal stimulus money will help the uninsured, and whether it would be easier to re-open the markets, Health and Human Services Sec. Alex Azar said people who had insurance with their employer and are now out of a job and that same insurance have "a special enrollment period."

Earlier in the briefing, Azar emphasized that funding will be used to cover costs of "delivering COVID-19 care for the uninsured."

"Then what we're doing is taking from that $100 billion to providers, taking money and saying if you're a provider, and you care for anybody who's uninsured, we are going to compensate you for doing that and we're going to compensate you at the medicare reimbursement rates, and you are not allowed to bill that uninsured individual anything," Azar said. He then touted that "in many respects it's better for those uninsured individuals. "

"They're going to get first dollar coverage," he said. "They're going to get care in the United States and the providers going to be made whole from this program."

Though Congress has passed three different coronavirus relief bills, lawmakers have not yet approved any legislati... (Read more)

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