In the wake of the escalating coronavirus pandemic, President Joe Biden will act Thursday to get more consumer health care, a down payment on his promise to drive the U.S. into coverage for everyone.

The White House said he was planning to sign an executive order reopening the insurance exchanges for HealthCare.gov, which the Trump administration failed to do. He would also move to begin repealing other initiatives of the Trump administration, including curbs on reproductive counselling and job conditions for low-income persons accessing Medicaid.

In order to accomplish his aim of health insurance benefits for all Americans, Biden has vowed to expand on the health plan of former President Barack Obama, thus opposing the single government-run scheme that Sen. Bernie Sanders advocated for in his “Medicare for All” plan. But with his more centrist strategy, Biden would require legislative support, and resistance to “Obamacare” still runs strong among Republicans.

When coverage has shrunk in the economic uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic, the most tangible short-term effect of Biden’s directives would come from the reopening of HealthCare.gov insurance markets. The White House said the new “special enrollment period” would begin Feb. 15 and continue through May 15. That will be paired with an advertising push and a call for the nationwide sign-up incentive to be balanced by states that run their own insurance markets.

The exchanges, established under the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, provide taxpayer-subsidized coverage independent of the medical background of an applicant or pre-existing conditions, like COVID-19.

Biden would also quickly reverse a government regulation that prohibits public support for abortion counselling or referrals provided by overseas health care charities. Known as the Mexico City Policy, depending on whether Democrats or Republicans run the White House, it can get turned on and off.

Other recommendations Biden intends to release Thursday may take months to implement. The Department of Health and Human Services is guiding him to:

Formal concern is whether Trump rules that restrict publicly sponsored family planning services from referring women for abortions should be rescinded. The ban on referrals led to the exit of the service by Planned Parenthood clinics. A new law, which needs to meet an existing legal procedure to deter court challenges, is needed to revoke a federal regulation.

Reexamine a Trump administration proposal that requires states to enforce job conditions to access Medicaid health care as a prerequisite for low-income persons. Federal courts also blocked job conditions, and concluded that they contributed to thousands of patients losing coverage and breached the legal charge of Medicaid to offer emergency care. It was decided by the Supreme Court to hear the issue.

Evaluate legislation that could weaken rights for persons with health needs, such as a regulation by the Trump administration that allowed the selling of short-term health care contracts that do not have to cover pre-existing medical conditions.

Explore options to make health care more competitive, even by addressing what is called the “family glitch of the ACA.” Under that clunky rule, discounted benefits can be withheld to an entire family if the household head has access to employee-only workplace coverage that is considered affordable. Possibly, fixing it would require legislation.

The acts related to abortion would bring Biden immediate praise from women’s rights advocates, as well as criticism from conservative social and religious groups. Abortion foes had free rein under President Donald Trump to continue to rewrite government legislation, and now the political pendulum is swinging again.

Biden has lobbied to repeal long-standing federal bans on abortion taxpayer support, but Legislative approval would entail a modification of that size to a set of laws known as the Hyde Amendment.

Many of the regulatory and legislative reforms Biden is pushing health authorities to implement aren’t going to happen immediately because, as the Trump administration figured out, hastily drafted regulations can be more quickly reversed in court. Time and time again, federal judges ruled that Trump officials run roughshod over administrative legal standards, such as proving that they considered multiple sides of an issue.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Biden’s candidate for health secretary, has not yet been approved by the Senate, but the White House said it won’t deter health officials from actually getting to work on the president’s guidelines.

Wide support has been given to the concept of reopening Obamacare’s pandemic health insurance markets, particularly from advocacy advocates, specialist physician associations, insurers and business organisations.

While the number of uninsured Americans has increased due to job losses in the coronavirus economy, demands to reopen HealthCare.gov were rejected by the Trump administration. One of the most bitter disappointments of the outgoing president was the inability to dismantle and restore Obamacare, as he consistently pledged to do. His government kept seeking to find ways to curb or fully unravel the initiative. This year, a ruling from the Supreme Court on Trump’s last legal appeal to the Affordable Care Act is awaited.

More than 23 million people are insured by the Obama-era health care legislation by a combination of affordable private insurance sold in all states and extended Medicaid accepted by 38 states, with the largest exception being Southern states. With the Medicaid expansion targeted to families with reduced wages, care is open to those who do not have job-based health benefits.

The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation reported that of some 28 million uninsured Americans before the pandemic, more than 16 million were eligible for some form of health law subsidy coverage. Many are eligible for zero-premium coverage thanks to the ACA’s financial aid, and it is supposed to be a significant selling point in the sales pitch of the Biden administration.

Experts believe that the number of uninsured persons has grown, possibly by 5 million to 10 million, due to layoffs in the coronavirus economy, but authoritative figures are pending government reports due later this year.