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 $416 billion, made last December.
The National Emergencies Act of 1976 was passed in an attempt to regulate the president's ability to declare open-ended national emergencies. The point of the law, commentators said at the time, was to give Congress the power of oversight on matters of national urgency. It is perhaps ironic then that President Trump announced he will, under the provisions of that law, declare a national emergency as a way to circumvent Congress and build a border wall.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Friday, Feb, 15, 2019.
Amazon's decision to pull its new HQ2 out of New York City is very bad for the city ー and a sign that the home of Wall Street is falling victim to anti-business attitudes, according to former CKE Restaurants CEO Andy Puzder. "I think it's a hit to the New York economy. New York is a big city, it's a strong city, but it used to be the home to capitalism. Now it's coming under some of these socialist policies and it's going to lose companies like Amazon ($AMZN)," Puzder told Cheddar on Thursday.
Amazon has backed out of its plan to build a second headquarters in Queens, New York. The abrupt decision shocked even those who opposed Amazon's planned expansion in Long Island City. Cheddar spoke with Jimmy Van Bramer, deputy leader of the New York City Council.
A day before the anniversary of the Parkland shooting, a massacre that re-framed the debate over gun control as a defining cause of Gen Z, Congress advanced its first piece of gun legislation in decades. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a newly elected Democrat from a Parkland-adjacent district who sits on that committee, discussed the victory with Cheddar.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019.
Catching a ride in New York just got more expensive, and passengers aren't the only ones complaining. "It's a problem for the drivers," Aleksey Medvedovskiy, the president of NYC Taxi Group, told Cheddar Wednesday. "It's a problem for the general public."
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday Feb. 13, 2019.
The daunting task of paying back astronomical student loans may soon be less taxing, California Congressman Scott Peters tells told Cheddar Tuesday. Rep. Peters (D-Calif.) has received 99 co-sponsors on his bipartisan Employer Participation in Repayment Act, which would allow employers to contribute to their employees' student loan payments, tax-free.
The shocking rise in teen vaping is a public health crisis that the FDA has been slow to address, according to a nationally recognized cardiologist. Dr. Kevin Campbell, who is also CEO of Pace Mate, a digital cardiac monitoring service, said the recent study from the CDC that linked vaping to a spike in teen tobacco use shows that more serious steps need to be take. The first step? Get rid of the flavored nicotine "pods," which Campbell said are acting as a gateway for teenage beginner vapers to get hooked on nicotine.
