One of President Trump's very favorite ways to talk about the Affordable Care Act—usually in early-morning tweets from on top of his toilet—is in the most ominous, dire, and vaguely post-apocalyptic terms he can imagine. Obamacare is "a disaster," or "collapsing,", or "imploding" before our very eyes. (He really likes to say "imploding.") Although the ACA could certainly be improved, if Republicans had any interest in doing so, there is no evidence for the president's constantly-invoked but never-explained assertions. In fact, as of this week, there will be zero countiesnext year in which marketplace insurance plans are not available to prospective buyers. (Hmmm, it's almost as if Donald Trump knows less than zero about the law he's supposed to oppose, or any of the replacement proposals he's supposed to favor instead.)

Never one to allow facts to get in the way of a good narrative, though, Trump and company have devised a clever new way to make their predictions about the Affordable Care Act come to pass: Just stop telling the American people about it. The New York Times reports that for 2018, government-sponsored marketing of enrollment will be slashed by 90 percent, and federal grants to nonprofits that assist individuals with that process process will be nearly halved.

Officials with the Department of Health and Human Services, who insisted on not being identified during a conference call with reporters, said on Thursday that the advertising budget for the open enrollment period that starts in November would be cut to $10 million, compared with $100 million spent by the Obama administration last year, a drop of 90 percent. Additionally, grants to about 100 nonprofit groups, known as navigators, that help people enroll in health plans offered by the insurance marketplaces will be cut to a total of $36 million, from about $63 million.

Ah yes, nothing says "This is an entirely legitimate policy decision that is not at all based on our boss' obsession with destroying the Affordable Care Act no matter who it kills" like refusing to have your name published in conjunction with the dissemination of the news to the press.