Thank You, Mr. Trump !

I never thought that I would say this, but thank you, Mr. Trump ! Because of your recent actions to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, I will get my health insurance for free in 2018.

My wife and I can be considered an Obamacare success story. We are both retired, but not quite old enough for Medicare. For the last four years, we have purchased insurance through the Federal ACA Exchange. Each year, our retirement income was too high for cost-sharing subsidies, but we kept our IRA income low enough (<4 times the poverty rate) to qualify for tax credits at the end of the year .

Thanks to the ACA, our insurance costs have stayed comparatively low. The available tax credits are based on the Second Lowest Cost Silver Plan (SLCSP) for each county's exchange. In the interest of saving money, we have always bought one of the less-expensive, higher deductible Bronze Plans.

After tax credits, our monthly out-of-pocket costs for insurance for 2014-17 has averaged $400/month. That is substantially less than we paid for similar insurance before implementation of the exchanges. Thank you, President Obama!

Of course, we signed-up again for 2018 coverage. It was fast and easy to re-enroll online at https://www.healthcare.gov/. We did not need help, but telephone operators are available for those who do. But if you also plan to get your 2018 insurance through the Exchanges, please hurry ! Open enrollment ends on December 15 this year.

Several companies, including the carrier we used from 2014 through 2017, dropped out of our exchange for 2018. In Washington County, we went from a choice of 41 plans in 2017 to just 20 plans (offered by three companies) for next year. Both Anthem and Molina cited the "uncertainties" in Washington as their reason for exiting the Exchange. This was a polite way of saying that Trump and his HHS Secretary have been purposely sabotaging the law.

There are certainly fewer choices this year than in the past. Still, the Marketplace is thriving, despite the moronic "Obamacare is dead!" bleating from the Saboteur-in-Chief.

Trump has done everything he can to kill Obamacare. He refused to allow the Government to spend funds allotted for publicizing the Exchanges. He has cut the enrollment window in half. He has berated Obamacare at every opportunity, often confusing many into believing that the program no longer exists. Worst of all, he has played politics with the lives of Americans by reneging on the law's Cost Sharing subsidies (CSR) provision.

CSR helped especially poor people afford insurance. It remitted money directly to the insurance companies in exchange for lower rates on Silver plans they bought on the Exchanges. After Trump welched on the government's payments, the insurance companies were still legally required to provide the lower rates to poorer people. In order to stay out of a Trump-induced bankruptcy, most of the remaining exchange insurance providers drastically raised the prices of their Silver plans.

The huge Trump-caused price increases only affected Silver plans. For examples, the Bronze plan that we selected for 2018 is only 16% more than the similar Bronze plan that we had in 2017. In contrast, the Second Lowest Cost Silver Plan (SLCSP) for 2018 is a whopping 67% higher than the SLCSP for 2017.

With our Bronze plan increasing by just 16%, and the SLCSP, upon which federal tax credits are based, increasing by 67%, we will end-up paying zero dollars for our Bronze plan. That is correct. We will get free health insurance in 2018. Through his ham-handed efforts to kill the Affordable Care Act, Trump has inadvertently made insurance much cheaper, or even free for many of us. Thank you, Mr. Trump !