Trump administration official blames Obama for the rise in uninsured people last year

Former President Barack Obama has now been out of office for more than two-and-a-half years, but that isn't stopping the Trump White House from blaming him for problems that occur on their watch.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Census Bureau released a report showing that the number of Americans without health insurance rose in 2018, marking the first time that the uninsured rate in the United States had grown since 2010, when the Affordable Care Act was first passed.

There are many factors to blame for the rise in the total number of uninsured, but one of the most prominent is the Trump administration's efforts to sabotage the law, which have included filing a lawsuit aimed at having it overturned entirely, as well as slashing advertising aimed at giving Americans help in using the law to obtain coverage.

But Seema Verma, who serves as Trump's administrator at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, wrote a blog post on Friday that blamed Obamacare itself for the rise in uninsured, despite the fact that the uninsured rate dropped for every year after 2010 while Obama was still in office.

"Numbers clearly show Obamacare has created a serious affordability problem on the individual market -- and this was all put in motion before President Trump took office," she wrote.

Verma never explained, however, why the uninsured rate only rose on Trump's watch while declining every year under Obama's watch in the years after the passage of Obamacare.