Trump’s Attack on Obamacare Cost Taxpayers $1 Million in His First Week in Office

It’s common knowledge that President Donald Trump wants to destroy the Affordable Care Act. After numerous failed repeal attempts in Congress and plenty of behind-the-scenes work to hinder the embattled healthcare act, Trump is furious that it still exists.

His main argument is that Obamacare is too expensive, and hurts insurance companies. But Paste, we hear you ask in a trembling, naive voice, if that were Trump’s priority, wouldn’t he try to get rid of Obamacare in a way that saves money?

You sweet child. You tiny baby. Of course not.

In a report that had gone overlooked until now, The Daily Beast found that an attempt to hinder Obamacare by the Trump administration cost taxpayers over $1 million dollars in the very first week that Trump was in office.

The problem was a communication error at the Department of Health and Human Services. The new Trump administration team took over the department at the time of Trump’s inauguration, and immediately ordered all outreach advertising for Obamacare to cease. Despite the fact that HHS staff repeatedly voiced concerns that it would waste millions of dollars (up to $9 million total), the order went out and marketplace outreach for Obamacare’s fourth enrollment term stopped.

The so-called Trump administration “beachhead” team immediately changed their mind, of course, when they were informed that stopping marketplace outreach would cost the federal government so much money. They reversed course and revised the order to only cease some marketplace outreach, but it was too late. About $1.1 million had already been wasted on now-useless outreach, money that was unrecoverable.

Insert joke about Trump being an excellent businessman here.