The Trump administration has been sharply curtailing outreach to promote health-care sign-ups under Affordable Care Act exchanges — cutting the enrollment period in half, scheduling outages for HealthCare.gov on Sundays and other popular times, slashing the advertising budget, and axing grants for groups that help people enroll — but President Trump and his aides are also quietly denying waivers for states trying to increase competition and lower costs for residents. And in at least one case, The Washington Post reports, Trump himself said no.
Officials in GOP-controlled Iowa had requested a Section 1332 waiver to transform the state's ObamaCare exchanges along conservative lines to expand marketplace options and contain premiums, and after Trump read about Iowa's plan, closely watched by other states, in The Wall Street Journal, he grew angry, The Washington Post reports, citing an individual briefed on what happened:
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