President Donald Trump has taken a bold step to wreck the Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare.According to Politico's Paul Demko, the new administration has pulled all advertisements for Healthcare.gov and has frozen efforts by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to encourage people to sign up for plans through the ACA.The pulling of ads includes those that have already been paid for and placed, according to Politico.For the 2015-2016 open enrollment period, HHS spent around $35 million on ads encouragingpeople to sign up.Americans with health insurance through their employer or Medicare or Medicaid can sign up for plans through the ACA's public exchanges through January 31 for a 2017 plan.Typically, the run-up to deadlines is accompanied by a significantuptick in sign ups. AsPolitico reported, this is especially true for young people, whoare needed to balance the risk in the individual market pools.Trump has maintained the law would "collapse on its own." Butaccording to CBO projections, the number of people enrolled will continue to increase and eventually stabilize, not go into the "death spiral" as Republicans predicted.The end of the open enrollment period is crucial because the shareof total enrollees that are age 18-34 increases substantially during that time.This is important because the pools have been filled with too many older and sicker people in certain states over the past few years, causing many large insurers to lose money on the exchanges.In turn, insurers leaving the exchanges and exacerbated cost increases.While there are some states that have mitigated these issues by expanding Medicaid and other provisions, it is crucial for the stability of some states' to get young people to sign up.According to a report from TheHuffington Post,an HHS official said the pulled ad buy was worth around $5 million.The push to sign up young people was important to try to correct course, but it appears the move by Trump's administration could hamstring that effort.Thus with fewer young people in the exchanges this year, the problems that GOP lawmakers have predicted would happen might come to pass.It is unclear just how much the scaling back as impacted the law so far because the HHS under Trump has also scaled back on any communication about Obamacare.The HHS Twitter account has not referenced the ACA deadline ' after tweeting about it multiple times a day ' since a tweet on January 19, the day before Trump's inauguration.It is unclear how many Americans have signed up for care since the departmenthas halted communications and not issued their typically bi-weekly enrollment update since the Trump administration took office. The last update on January 10 peggedenrollments through the ACA's provisions at 11.54 million.Former director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Andy Slavitt, whose department of the HHS oversawthe ACA exchanges, tweeted his displeasure with the move, saying it was "misguided actions which purposely hurt ACA consumers."NEW: very misguided actions which purposely hurt ACA consumers & cost insurance companies money. Disappointing.https://t.co/qG239eigXc pic.twitter.com/C4zZS5u40E' Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) January 27, 2017Trump has long been opposed to the ACA, calling it a "disaster" and promising to repeal and replace it.Republicanlawmakers kicked off the repeal of the law by advancing a budget resolution through the Houseand Senate that directs committees to draft a replacement bill using the budget reconciliation process.So far, there has not been a concrete proposal for a replacement from Republican leadership, but a few GOP senators have introduced plans that are significantlydifferent.SEE ALSO:Trump is making a massive promise about his Obamacare replacementJoin the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: Watch protesters and Trump supporters get into a fiery argument on the National Mall right after the new president was sworn in
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