Donald Trump Donald Trump Jeb Bush: Trump a ‘distraction in and of himself’ Protests erupt across Russia, hundreds arrested: reports Ill. gov candidate runs as fresh face, despite ties to political machine MORE and Senate Republicans believe ObamaCare will re-emerge as an explosive political issue before the November elections. 
 
 At a private strategy meeting on Thursday, Trump and Senate Republicans agreed that President Obama’s signature law could be a millstone around Hillary Clinton Hillary Rodham Clinton“60 Minutes” tracks how fake news spreads Ill. gov candidate runs as fresh face, despite ties to political machine Huma Abedin 'working hard' on marriage with Anthony Weiner: report MORE’s neck. 
 
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 Republicans point to reports of rising premiums in arguing the public will turn firmly against the reform law. They say a fight over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could help elect a GOP president this fall and keep the Senate in Republican hands. 
 
 “I’m expecting big [premium] increases and for the Obama administration to try to hide them all the way through the election,” Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairman John Barrasso John BarrassoHow 'Big Pharma' stifles pharmaceutical innovation Making water infrastructure a priority Overnight Energy: Trump's Keystone XL approval coming soon MORE (R-Wyo.), who attended the meeting with Trump, told The Hill in an interview. 
 
 “This healthcare law has been devastating to the Democratic Party.” 
 
 Trump’s rise in the GOP has been a shock to many senators, who have openly worried about their prospects with the wealthy businessman at the top of their ticket. 
 
 Republicans are defending 24 seats in this year’s election, including in Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Florida — which Obama won in the 2008 and 2012 elections. 
 
 At Thursday’s meeting, where Trump largely reassured GOP senators that he is one of them, ObamaCare became a rallying point. 
 
 Senate GOP leaders at the meeting predicted that fast-rising health insurance premiums would spark a public backlash. Trump chimed in that he expects the administration might attempt to postpone the start of the ACA enrollment period until after the elections, according to lawmakers who attended. 
 
 Though the administration delayed ObamaCare’s enrollment in 2014, healthcare experts say the chances of a delay this year are slim to none because it would require a new round of rule-making. 
 
 Insurers also are already in the middle of filing their proposed premium increases for next year, and those proposals have already begun to be made public. 
 
 “It’s kind of too late to fundamentally change anything,” said Gary Claxton, an expert on the healthcare law at the Kaiser Family Foundation. 
 
 But Trump’s comments highlight a piece of common ground for Republicans in the fall that he and the GOP senators are eager to exploit. 
 
 One in four people in a recent national poll by National Public Radio and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said ObamaCare has hurt them directly, compared to just 15 percent who said it has helped them. 
 
 The New York Times reported over the weekend that a growing number of doctors in New York don’t take any of the plans offered through ­ObamaCare, and many people who have them wind up feeling like second-class patients. 
 
 In rural America, the law is being blamed for stifling competition among insurers. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that in large swaths of the country, the law’s online insurance marketplace gives people only one option. That will be true in all of Alaska and Alabama, as well as parts of Arizona, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee. 
 
 The other alarming trend is what experts project to be low double-digit increases in health insurance premiums for many plans. In states where insurance companies have already alerted officials to impending rate hikes, the numbers are daunting. 
 
 In Virginia, insurers participating in HealthCare.gov have discussed rate increases ranging from 9 to 37 percent, according to The Associated Press. 
 
 Marilyn Tavenner, the president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, predicted last month that people on ObamaCare should expect significant premium jumps for 2017. 
 
 At a recent meeting with the editorial board for The Daily Sentinel, a paper covering Grand Junction, Colo., Sen. Michael Bennet Michael BennetUnder pressure, Dems hold back Gorsuch support The Hill’s Whip List: Where Dems stand on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Senators introduce new Iran sanctions MORE (D-Colo.), who’s up for reelection, acknowledged that ObamaCare has not done much to cut costs. 
 
 He said health plans in western and central Colorado are “some of the most expensive healthcare on the planet.” 
 
 And he admitted there’s no easy fix in sight. 
 
 “I don’t have answers for Grand Junction, but I’m aware of the problem,” he said. 
 
 Democratic defenders of the law counter that these increases in premiums will be offset by subsidies. 
 
 White House chief of staff Denis McDonough Denis McDonoughObama chief of staff: 'The president cannot order a wiretap' Obama's chief of staff joins foundation with focus on jobs Chicago mayor visits White House to meet with Trump aides MORE lauded the law in remarks Friday at a summit sponsored by Enroll America, a group that encourages people to sign up for subsidized healthcare. 
 
 He said despite Republican efforts to gut it, ObamaCare has “liberated millions of Americans from fear and provided them with a peace of mind.” 
 
 The percentage of uninsured adults dropped from 18 percent in the middle of 2013 to 11.4 percent at the start of 2015. 
 
 Clinton, Obama and other Democrats also are not afraid of having a political debate over repealing the ACA. They believe such a fight will backfire on the GOP, which sought to repeal the law in 2013 but ended up shutting the government down for 16 days. 
 
 “Senate Republicans are pushing to take away people’s healthcare and go back to a time when women could be charged more than men for healthcare, you could get kicked off your plan when you got sick, and people hit lifetime caps on coverage,” said Sadie Weiner, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. 
 
 She said Republicans should spend less time “grandstanding and politicizing” and work with Democrats to push policies that would reduce premium increases. 
 
 Barrasso, however, expressed confidence that the healthcare fight will continue to help his party. 
 
 He noted that Republicans have picked up 13 Senate seats, 11 governorships, 69 House seats and over 900 state legislative seats across the country since Democrats passed ObamaCare by party-line votes in 2009 and 2010. 
 
 “Costs continue to rise and insurers continue to leave state exchanges and cancel plans because ObamaCare has regulated them out of the market,” said Greg Blair, a spokesman for the National Republican Senate Committee. 
 
 Peter Sullivan contributed. ||||| The U.S. uninsurance rate fell to 9.1 percent last year, according to data released Tuesday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
 
 
 
 It was the first time the percentage of people without some form of health coverage has gone into single digits, and a 2.4 percentage point drop from 2014. 
 
 The number of people uninsured in 2015 was 28.6 million, which was 7.4 million fewer than 2014, according to the CDC. 
 
 Since 2011, when the uninsured rate stood at 15.1 percent, that rate has fallen 6 full percentage points, according to the CDC's National Health Interview Survey. 
 
 Obamacare began going into full effect in 2014, which was the first year that people could have private health insurance plans purchased on government-run marketplaces. That was also the first year that nearly all Americans were obligated to have some form of health insurance or face a possible tax penalty. ||||| The uninsured rate fell to 9.1 percent in 2015, a record low, according to a new survey. 
 
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 The survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the latest evidence of a steep drop in the uninsured rate due to ObamaCare’s coverage expansion. 
 
 The uninsured rate was 14.4 percent in 2013, before the main ObamaCare provisions went into effect. 
 
 The difference from then until 2015 translates to 16.2 million more people with health insurance. 
 
 A separate estimate from economists at the Department of Health and Human Services in March found that 20 million people have gained coverage due to ObamaCare. 
 
 But the CDC survey shows that 28.6 million remained uninsured in 2015. 
 
 The data show gains in enrollment in both public and private coverage. But whether a state expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare is a dividing line in how high the coverage gains were. 
 
 Thirty-one states so far have accepted the expansion of eligibility for Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income Americans, and the Obama administration is urging more to do so. 
 
 The uninsured rate dropped 8.6 percentage points, from 18.4 percent to 9.8 percent, in states that expanded Medicaid. 
 
 It dropped 5.2 percentage points, from 22.7 percent to 17.5 percent, in states that did not expand the program.
– For the first time ever, fewer than 10% of Americans lack health insurance, according to data released Tuesday by the CDC. And CNBC calls that "a clear sign of ObamaCare's impact." In 2015, only 9.1% of Americans—about 28.6 million people—were uninsured. That's down from 14.2% in 2013 when ObamaCare really started to go into effect, the Hill reports. That drop amounts to another 16.2 million Americans who now have health insurance. "Today's report is further proof that our country has made undeniable and historic strides thanks to the Affordable Care Act." Sylvia Burwell, secretary of health and human services, tells CNBC. "Our country ought to be proud of how far we've come and where we're going." But regardless of ObamaCare's success in reducing the ranks of the uninsured—the Obama administration estimates more than 20 million Americans have gained insurance since the ACA passed in 2010—the Hill reports that Republicans still plan to use it as a wedge issue in November. Donald Trump and Senate Republicans believe hitting Hillary Clinton over ObamaCare will propel them to victories. “This healthcare law has been devastating to the Democratic Party," John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, tells the Hill.