Attention young healthy people: Your status as a young healthy person is highly contingent. Unless of course you never drive a car, cross the street, ski, slice a bagel . . . plus, cancer is no respecter of age. Your life could go all pear-shaped in the blink of an eye and you will be so relieved to have that insurance card in your pocket as they wheel you through the emergency room doors. Besides, we need everybody in the insurance pool for it to function properly.

That the president has taken steps to undermine the Affordable Care Act — including slashing the advertising budget for the open enrollment period — is no secret and may be discouraging potential participants. Rhode Island is one of a dozen states that operates its own exchange — we can chart our own course regarding advertising and promotion — but The Dose is happy to help get the word out.

The ProJo ran an article concerning the current status of the ACA during this abbreviated enrollment period. And while Trump has been dicking around with deductibles and co-pays,

The federal subsidy on actual premiums remains, but some state officials are concerned that consumers will be confused and believe those, too, have been eliminated. The worry is that they simply would not bother to shop for a plan, thinking they couldn’t afford it. About 12 million Americans buy individual overage on the exchanges, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The exchange here in Rhode Island is HealthSource RI. Let’s enroll the hell out of this thing.