REPORT RELEASE: Trump’s ACA Sabotage: Bad Medicine for New Jersey

For Immediate Release

Contact: Louis Di Paolo (NJPP): 201-417-5049 (cell) or dipaolo@njpp.org

TRENTON (July 30, 2018) – On Monday morning New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP) joined Senator Bob Menendez, Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, Congressman Frank Pallone, activist Ady Barkan, and New Jersey Citizen Action to celebrate the 53rd anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid. At the event, NJPP unveiled a new report analyzing the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the Affordable Care Act and its impact on the health care market in New Jersey.

The report, Trump’s ACA Sabotage: Bad Medicine for New Jersey, is the most comprehensive review yet of the harm the Trump sabotage has caused New Jerseyans this year. It lists eighteen actions that have been taken by the Trump administration to undermine the ACA and estimates the drop in the number of New Jerseyans who obtained health coverage both on and off the Marketplace as well as families with children in Medicaid; the total federal funds that will be lost which will have an economic impact; the harm that Trump anti-immigrant policies will have on  health coverage; and the additional cost that middle class New Jersey residents  must now pay due to much higher premiums.

Trump’s ACA Sabotage, by the Numbers:

• 80 percent: Cut in federal funding for navigators to help uninsured find coverage.
• 40,000: Drop in enrollment of middle class New Jerseyans in the individual market.
• 22,000: Drop in enrollment of New Jersey parents and children in Medicaid.
• 18.7 percent: Increase in premium costs in New Jersey since 2017.
• $125 Million: Cumulative increase in insurance costs in 2018 for 137,000 New Jerseyans insured through the market.  

“Middle class and low-income New Jerseyans are being priced out of the health insurance market due to the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to undermine the Affordable Care Act,” said Raymond Castro, NJPP director of health policy. “For the first time since the ACA was implemented, enrollment is down in both the marketplace and Medicaid, and the insurance rate appears to be increasing after three years of steady improvement. This is an outrage and a tragedy for the 700,000 New Jerseyans who are still uninsured and those families and older New Jersey residents who can no longer afford their skyrocketing premiums. While New Jersey has taken steps to protect its residents from the Trump administration, more must be done to combat the barrage of attacks on New Jersey’s health care market.”

Read the report here:

https://www.njpp.org/blog/trumps-aca-sabotage-bad-medicine-for-new-jersey

Trump’s ACA Sabotage, by the Numbers: 

http://www.njpp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Trump-ACA-Sabotage-By-the-Numbers-July-2018-NJPP.pdf