Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker calls on Trump to open ACA special enrollment period
Gov. J.B. Pritzker is calling on President Donald Trump to open a special enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
At his daily briefing on coronavirus, Pritzker said people across the country need to have access to healthcare during the pandemic. At the briefing, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, announced 986 new cases and 42 additional deaths, bringing the state case total to 6,980 and death total to 141.
“Now more than ever we need as many people as possible to have access to healthcare to seek out testing,” Pritzker said. “If we’re ever going to able to fight COVID-19 and eliminate it as a risk to our people.”
Pritzker added that there are almost 800,000 people uninsured in Illinois who will need healthcare as COVID-19 continues to spread.
“Over 500,000 of whom could potentially sign up for the ACA tomorrow if the federal government opened up a special enrollment period,” he said.
According to Politico, Trump’s administration is not considered opening a new enrollment window.
Pritzker said not opening the special enrollment period would be like “malpractice.”
“Some White House officials are saying the president will not be reopening the insurance marketplace in response to the coronavirus,” Pritzker said. “Frankly, this is leadership malpractice.”
Pritzker added that some Illinoisans may already be eligible to enroll in the ACA. Employees that were recently laid off are eligible to enroll, he said, due to a clause in the act for those experiencing a “qualifying life event.”
As for the increasing number of cases and deaths in Illinois, Ezike said the worse is most likely yet to come.
“As we develop more cases we are going to have more deaths,” Ezike said. “We will see growth in the number of deaths, most, unfortunately, until we reach that peak.”
This story was originally published April 1, 2020 at 3:24 PM.