Horns Down: Briggo Coffee machine down for the rest of the semester
On Sunday, students who had shared their e-mail addresses with Briggo Coffee, the startup behind the sleek automated beverage vendor in the FAC, received an e-mail saying that the FAC Briggo machine would be closed for the semester as the company works on “system improvements at our facility.” Regularly getting your coffee at Briggo already felt like having standing plans with a flighty friend. You show up, but they only seem to make it half of the time, and, the other half of the time, they make you wait twenty minutes and then give you a leaky cup. Granted, startups take time to develop, but we wish they could do their developing somewhere were they don’t constantly deny us the quality coffee we know they’re capable of making. Horns down until you get it together, Briggo, because Starbucks is awful, and we don’t want to walk all the way to Medici.
Photo courtesy of the Associated Press.
Sara Rodriguez looks over an Affordable Care Act brochure in Houston on March 11.
Horns Down: Too many Texan have yet to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act
The deadline to sign up for a plan under the Affordable Care Act’s Health Insurance Marketplace is Monday, and, according to recent data released by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, far too many Texans and Austinites, in particular, are still without coverage. Anyone who begins the Marketplace enrollment application by the deadline will receive an extension until mid-April, but those who don’t will face a tax penalty of either 1 percent of their yearly household income or $95 per person. Only 295,025 of Texas’ nearly 6 million uninsured residents have signed up, and anywhere from 35,000 to 100,000 of those uninsured live in East Austin neighborhoods alone, according to a profile by Enroll America, an advocacy program that helps Americans find coverage. To sign up, Texans can visit healthcare.gov or, if they need additional help enrolling, get in touch with advocacy groups such as Insure Central Texas.
