Biden looks to expand Obamacare coverage, remains stuck on student loans

Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman discusses President Biden's proposal to expand the Affordable Care Act and his stance on student loan debt cancellation.

Video Transcript

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BRIAN SOZZI: A new change could be coming to the Affordable Care Act. Yahoo Finance senior columnist Rick Newman has been diving into this. Rick, so what is the Biden administration looking to propose here?

RICK NEWMAN: They're trying to address something known as the "family glitch." And the way this works is, some people work at companies where they do get health insurance-- and the way to tell if that actually is affordable, as a percentage of your income, you're only allowed to consider the cost of an individual plan. But of course, some people will need a plan for their spouse and their kids.

So what this change would do, would say you're allowed to consider the cost of an entire plan that would cover everybody. And if that's above the threshold for affordability, which is about 10% of your total income, then you would qualify for subsidies under the ACA, and that would be a change because these people do not get those subsidies now. So that could affect about five million people.

And the Biden administration estimates that about one million of them would actually take advantage of this change to lower the cost of health insurance. That would go into effect January 1 at the beginning of next year.

JULIE HYMAN: And speaking of lowering the costs of things, Rick Newman, you've been looking at Biden's waning popularity and what's contributing to it. We all know that inflation is topic number one. But that's not all. So talk to us about what else you've been seeing.

RICK NEWMAN: Well, there's this deadline coming up on May 1, which is when people who have student debt-- there has been a moratorium on student debt payments for two years, going all the way back to the passage of the CARES Act in 2020. And President Trump extended that deadline, and President Biden has now extended it three times. So are people going to have to start making payments again on their student loans?

It's not clear what the Biden administration is going to do. But meanwhile, remember, Biden did say he favored canceling student debt up to $10,000. That's not as much as Elizabeth Warren wanted to do or Bernie Sanders back in the 2020 presidential campaign. But Biden has not done that. And I think his point back then was he favors canceling student debt up to $10,000, but he wants Congress to pass a law to do that.

Congress has not done that. And meanwhile, Biden hasn't done anything. And if you look at the polls of Biden's approval, his popularity is sinking the most among voters under 30. And I think there's a connection with his inability to do-- or he just has decided not to do anything about student debt. This is a hard problem to solve. There are some reasons why canceling student debt is actually not a good idea.

But Biden has just not really addressed it at all. He didn't mention it at all in his State of the Union speech on March 1, and it's not in the budget that he just put out there. So is Biden ever going to do anything about student debt? The clock is ticking.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah. I mean-- and people, like Sheila Bair, who we've spoken with and who has written op-eds on this on Yahoo Finance, have said, don't cancel all of it, but cancel it below a certain threshold. I mean, he does, to your point, like, if he wanted to, he could, what, pass an executive order. There are other recourses he has, no?

RICK NEWMAN: Well, it's not clear. So this is one of those things where some people say he has the authority to do this by executive action, but it would probably get challenged in court and it would be one of those things that is pending for months, or even years, as we go through the court. By the way, Biden, a year ago, did ask his education secretary for advice. He said, can you give me a memo on whether I can actually do this or not.

We've seen Biden ask for other types of reviews like this, often with a 90-day deadline. In other words, this is a matter of urgency, get back to me quickly so we can do something. This thing about "can I cancel student debt" has been pending for a year, and the Biden administration has not said whether or when that recommendation is coming. So it seems like the Biden administration is just stalling on this.

They really don't want to address it.

JULIE HYMAN: Wow. And finally, Rick, while we have you, i have to ask you about the Twitter story today, that Elon Musk is joining the Twitter board. And I will ask you, because you've covered politics, about this aspect in particular. Musk has talked a lot about free speech on Twitter. Does him joining the board and influencing the company mean we will see a return of a certain former president who had a lifetime ban from the service?

RICK NEWMAN: What president are you talking about, Julie? Oh, President Trump? Trump doesn't need Twitter because he has his own social media network now called Truth Social. Although, that does not seem to be going so well. There were two executives recently left. The stock has been tanking lately. If Musk cares about Donald Trump, why doesn't he just buy Truth Social?

That's Trump's social media network. It's a lot cheaper than Twitter, so he could just buy the whole thing. But is Musk going to change anything at Twitter? I mean, very interesting. This whole thing about free speech has a lot to do with inaccuracies and bogus information. So that is the phrase that many far-right people use to say we should be able to put whatever lies we want onto Twitter.

Musk has a different view. He just wants to sound off. Maybe the SEC needs to get involved here, because that has been a big issue, of course, with that finding by the SEC that Musk had to have his tweets approved by the general counsel of Tesla ahead of time. Remember that? So I wonder if his involvement with Twitter now is going to affect that at all.

BRIAN SOZZI: I don't think he wants to buy Truth Social, Rick. There's really nothing there. I'm still waiting to get approved on the site. I just deleted the app. There's nothing really. It just has not lived up to expectations. Rick Newman, thanks so much.

RICK NEWMAN: They don't even let people on, like us.

BRIAN SOZZI: They don't even let people on! That's all part of social media. Get people on there. We've gotta raise capital off our user growth. Rick Newman, check you later, bud.