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.
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When William Barr, President Trump's nominee for attorney general, appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday for his confirmation hearing, his views on executive privilege will be under the microscope. "Mr. Barr has expressed some very broad views of executive authority and he's also expressed a very strong view that a president cannot be criminally charged," Jennifer Daskal, Associate Professor of Law at American University, told Cheddar on Monday.
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These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Monday, Jan. 14, 2019.
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Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) warned President Trump not to mess with emergency funding for California on Friday after the commander-in-chief threatened to cut off disaster-relief in the fire-ravaged state. In a tweet on Wednesday, Trump suggested that California itself was to blame for the wildfires that killed 86 people and destroyed thousands of homes last year, and said he was considering pulling its FEMA funds.
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Is it time for the federal government to hire its own chief information officer? Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.) thinks so. He told Cheddar Friday that the recent spate of major data breaches warrant a federal czar to help protect consumers and potentially even levy penalties on companies that don't do enough to safeguard users' information.
As the government shutdown approaches the milestone of becoming the longest in history, Transportation Security Agency employees are feeling the strain ー and soon, so will travelers, Joe Shuker, a TSA union representative, told Cheddar.
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