The Trump administration last year eliminated television advertising for HealthCare.gov despite projections suggesting that Obamacare enrollment would fall by more than 100,000 as a result, newly disclosed government emails show.

The decision to cut television advertising, announced in August 2017, was part of a larger and dramatic cut to outreach efforts for the federal governments insurance website, which is part of the Affordable Care Act . At the time, administration officials said they had no reason to believe those reductions, including the end of TV advertising, would cause fewer people to sign up.

But in a series of email conversations last year, analysts at a private contractor and senior staff at the agency in charge of HealthCare.gov discussed an econometric model designed to predict the likely effect of changes to the advertising budget.

Weeks before the announcement of the cut, one of the analysts cited a prediction that enrollment would fall by 102,029 without television spots promoting HealthCare.gov and the availability of coverage on the site. The estimate, which the analyst described as very conservative, covered just a portion of the advertising cuts.

The decision was one in a series of actions, such as yanking funds from organizations that help people enroll , that seemed consistent with Trumps vow last year that he would let Obamacare fail .

Many experts believe the cumulative effect of these steps over the past two years helps explain why the number of uninsured Americans is edging back up after hitting a record low during the Obama administration and why sign-ups at HealthCare.gov this year are lagging last years pace, although open enrollment doesnt end until Saturday.

What The Emails Say

The emails, which the left-leaning watchdog group Democracy Forward obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and then provided to HuffPost, start in January 2017, when Trump became president. One of his administrations very first moves was to cut off advertising for the remainder of the 2017 open-enrollment period, which still had a few days to go.

That turned out to be a harbinger. At the end of August, the administration announced it was wiping out nearly the entire promotional budget. Instead of allocating $100 million, as the Obama administration had done for the final year of enrollment it was overseeing, the Trump administration would spend just $10 million. It would also be focusing exclusively on digital advertising and outreach, with no funding at all for television.