As Washington debates whether the country should repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, applicants are rushing to get covered, reportedly driving applications to a record high.
“I’m glad that the people understand the importance of getting coverage,” Donna Christensen, the former delegate for the U.S. Virgin Islands’ at-large district, told Cheddar on Wednesday.
But many still remain uninsured. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 28.2 million people under the age of 65 did not have coverage in 2016.
For context, that's a smaller proportion than before Obamacare passed. The federal agency said that the percentage of people uninsured now stands at 9 percent, compared to 16 percent in 2010.
Many uninsured and current beneficiaries of the Act worry that a repeal would be in place by 2019 and that time is running out. However, Christensen argues that this is not the case. She says it’s going to be very hard for Congress to repeal ACA.
“The Affordable Care Act is still the law of the land,” the ex-congresswoman said, stating that she doubts a repeal would ever happen.
“It was not easy to get the law passed, but it’s going to be more difficult to take it away,” Christensen said.
She encouraged the uninsured to seek coverage by December 15th this year, pointing out that benefits will be valid into the next year.
Congressional Budget Office director Keith Hall put out a blog post on the federal agency’s website on Wednesday. He says that according to the CBO’s most recent baseline, repealing Obamacare's individual mandate would reduce the nation’s federal budget deficit by $338 billion within the next decade. That's less than the previous estimate of $416 billion, made last December.
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds is urging lawmakers in Washington to ratify the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which she says will help bring stability to her state’s agriculture industry.
Twitter will begin posting notices on tweets from social media savvy politicians that break the platform’s rules but are in the public’s interest, the company announced Thursday.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Thursday, June 27, 2019.
The 2020 presidential hopefuls agreed that despite recent positive signs in the U.S. economy, not all Americans have benefited from the boom equally.
Democratic candidates were asked about the climate crisis during the first presidential primary debates on Wednesday and Thursday in Miami, a city that is currently experiencing its hottest week in more than three decades.
Julián Castro, 2020 presidential hopeful, believes the deaths of Andrés Manuel Lopez Óbrador and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria, were avoidable if not for a Trump policy that limits the number of asylum seekers per day
San Francisco's board of supervisors has voted a final time to effectively ban the sale of e-cigarettes in the city until the products are reviewed and approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, June 29, 2019.
As immigration officials return unaccompanied minors to a controversial Border Patrol facility, Deputy Secretary of the HHS Eric Hargan tells Cheddar, "We are running out of money in our program, and we really need to get the money so that we can provide services for these children."
As the recent push to legalize recreational cannabis in the Empire State failed in the legislature, state Sen. Diane Savino is putting forward the approach of expanding New York's medical marijuana program in order to further normalize the issue.
