Parsing Policy: De-Escalation Training; Gender-Affirming Care; ACA’s Impact

The Washington Post: The Shooting Of Walter Wallace Jr. Shows How Desperately Police Need Reform
When police arrived at the West Philadelphia home of Walter Wallace Jr. on Monday afternoon, it reportedly was the third time that police had gone to the address that day. Not a lot is publicly known about what happened the first two times police responded, but Mr. Wallace’s family said it was seeking help for the 27-year-old, who struggled with mental illness. Mr. Wallace was instead shot and killed by police, and the nation once again is confronted with agonizing questions about the treatment of a Black man. A joint investigation by police and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office into the death of Mr. Wallace is underway. (10/28)

Stat: Laws To Ban Gender-Affirming Care Could Increase Youth Suicides
Legislation proposed or under consideration in 19 states since early 2020 aims to prohibit access to gender-affirming care for minors. Several of these laws even threaten legal action against the clinicians who provide such care. (Kacie Kidd and Gina Sequeira, 10/29)

The New York Times: Er, Can I Ask A Few Questions About Abortion?
You know who really reduced abortion numbers in the U.S.? President Obama, with the Affordable Care Act. ...Millions of American Christians are likely to vote for President Trump on Tuesday because they believe it a religious obligation to support a president who will appoint “pro-life” judges. But as I’ve observed before, there is an incipient rethinking underway in evangelical and Catholic circles about what it means to be “pro-life,” and let me try to add to that ferment. For the truth is that the litmus test approach to abortion on the part of many conservative Christians is anomalous, both religiously and historically. (Nicolas Kristof, 10/28)

The Washington Post: Jared Kushner, Peggy Noonan And White Problems With Black Ambition
When you’re Black in America, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. You’re either shiftless or too ambitious. If you’re too ambitious, you better not for one moment show a sense of comfort in your own skin lest you be deemed not serious enough for your lofty ambitions. And the enforcers of these precepts usually look and sound exactly as Jared Kushner and Peggy Noonan did this week. (Jonathan Capehart, 10/28)

The Hill: Working Together To Effectively Address Patient Identification During COVID-19 
The COVID-19 pandemic has put a strain on many areas of our health care and public health system and laid bare existing problems that are exacerbated during this crisis. One such area that must be addressed by policymakers is the issue of patient identification. Each year thousands of Americans lose their lives through administrative errors, including patient misidentification, but right now the U.S. lacks a national strategy to address this dire problem. (Reps. Bill Foster and Mike Kelly, 10/28)

Miami Herald: South Florida, Vote To Keep Your Heads Above Water
In less than one week, we, the people of the United States of America, are going to make a decision that will critically impact how we will spend the rest of our days on this planet, how future generations will live on this planet and how many more pandemics we will bring to it. Politicians focus on the here and now. On Election Day, let’s remind them that our lives continue beyond their terms of office. Unless they change our current course of action, skyrocketing carbon emissions will continue to heat the planet, melt polar caps and bring catastrophe to a peninsula defined by water: increased sea-level rise, more coastal flooding, saltwater intrusion into our freshwater aquifer, prolonged and record-breaking heat waves, extreme weather, including stronger, stalled and wetter hurricanes), ecosystem collapse, more pandemics and, eventually, a weakening of the Gulf Stream. (Xavier Cortada, 10/28)