Parsing Policy: Trump’s Still Out To Destroy The ACA; Pandemic News At Debate Hard For Any Voter To Dismiss

The Washington Post: The Last Debate Is The Final Straw
The good news is that we likely will never be forced to endure another debate featuring President Trump. The better news is that even before the Thursday night event, Trump sabotaged himself by pre-releasing an interview for “60 Minutes” with CBS News’s Lesley Stahl in which he declared flatly that he hoped the Supreme Court would invalidate the Affordable Care Act. "I hope that they end it. It’ll be so good if they end it,” Trump said. This is what they call in soccer an “own goal.” Former vice president Joe Biden could not have asked for more going into a debate. But as a bonus, Trump not only displayed his whiny, thin-skinned demeanor, but he also let on that he has no replacement health-care plan for Obamacare. (Jennifer Rubin, 10/22)

WBUR: Overturning The Affordable Care Act Would Be Catastrophic — Especially For People With Disabilities 
For the 61 million Americans who live with a disability, there’s an important date on the calendar this fall: November 10, the day the Supreme Court will hear a case about whether to overturn the Affordable Care Act. President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans have picked a Supreme Court nominee whose position is clear: she doesn’t like the ACA, or the previous court rulings that upheld it. There is so much at stake. (Elizabeth Warren and Matthew Cortland, 10/23)

The Washington Post: Want To Protect People With Preexisting Conditions? You Need The Full ACA.
Ensuring that people with preexisting conditions will continue to have access to health insurance has become a central issue in the presidential campaign — all the more so because the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments one week after the election in a lawsuit to nullify the Affordable Care Act. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has been hammering home the points that the Trump administration backs that suit, that a Supreme Court with Amy Coney Barrett on it might be sympathetic to the challenge and that the ACA is what stands between voters and the old days when preexisting conditions could disqualify you from coverage. (Larry Levitt, 10/22)

Fox News: Trump Vs. Biden – Here's Who Won The Debate And What It Means For The 2020 Election
“If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this: anyone who is responsible, for not taking control — in fact, saying ‘I take no responsibility at all’ initially — anyone that is responsible for that many deaths should not remain president of the United States of America,” Biden said. The pandemic has taken the lives of more than 222,000 Americans, and more than 8.3 million people in the U.S. have been infected with the coronavirus.In another plus for Biden — and to the likely disappointment of the Trump campaign — the former vice president successfully avoided a lengthy discussion about the foreign business contacts of his son Hunter. (Douglas E. Schoen, 10/23)

Detroit Free Press: Trump Falsely Says Michigan Is 'Like A Prison.' Here Are The Facts.
President Donald Trump said, "Michigan is shut down, it's like a prison" during the final presidential debate Thursday night. Like many governors across the country, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued a stay-at-home order to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The order, issued March 23, was lifted June 1. Churches and houses of worship in Michigan were exempt from penalties under the state's order. Bars and restaurants across the state reopened shortly after the order was lifted followed by barbershops, spas and hair and nail salons in mid-June. Casinos in Detroit were allowed to reopen in early August. Schools across the state reopened this fall for in-person learning. And Whitmer allowed gyms to reopen in early September and movie theaters and bowling alleys to reopen in early October. (Clara Hendrickson,10/22)

The Washington Post: Do We Tolerate The Kidnapping Of Children? This Election Is Our Chance To Answer.
What kind of people are we? As a society, are we so decadent and insecure that we show "toughness" by deliberately being cruel to innocent children? Is this what our nation has come to? Or are we better than that? This election demands we answer those questions. The choice between President Trump and Joe Biden is not just political. It is also moral. And perhaps nothing more starkly illustrates the moral dimension of that decision than the Trump administration's policy of kidnapping children at the southern U.S. border, ripping them away from their families — and doing so for no reason other than to demonstrate Trump's warped vision of American strength. (Eugene Robinson, 10/22)

The Wall Street Journal: Biden’s Character Campaign
President Trump came to the second and last presidential debate Thursday night trying to pin down Joe Biden on his policies and family’s business with foreign governments. Mr. Biden did his best to parry and duck, coming back time and again to his main themes of “character” and an end to divisive politics. With a solid lead, and more than 40 million votes already cast, Mr. Biden’s bet is that he can run out the clock. Trump was both better prepared and more disciplined than in the first debate, and if he loses on Nov. 3 he will wish he had done that the first time. He offered the best defense we’ve heard him make of his coronavirus effort, focusing on the vaccines in development, his mobilization of resources in the spring, and the need to balance protection of the vulnerable with reopening the country. (10/23)

Stat: Doctors Need To Lead By Example At The Voting Booth 
As the needle moves past 220,000 deaths from Covid-19 and the Supreme Court prepares to hear California v. Texas, which threatens to eliminate health insurance for almost 20 million Americans, it’s no surprise that health care remains one of the top issues for voters this election. Historically, doctors vote less than other professionals. From 2006 to 2018, doctors were less likely to vote than the general public, particularly if they were not already registered to vote. (Hussain Lalani, Rija Siddiqui and Arthur Hong, 10/22)

Stat: Science Journal Editors Shouldn't Contribute To Politicizing Science 
When the editors of some of the world’s leading science journals agree on something, it is generally safe to assume that they are correct. So when prominent journals like Science, Nature, and the New England Journal of Medicine recently published editorials excoriating President Trump’s deadly bungling of the pandemic response and suppression of scientific activity, the editors accurately spotlighted the troubling deficiencies of the current administration. But in advocating against or endorsing a presidential candidate, these editors made a grave error. (Genevieve P. Kanter, 10/23)