Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Pros, Cons Of Two Very Different Health Plans; Lessons On Dealing With The Pandemic
USA Today: Donald Trump Would Repeal And Replace Obamacare With A Nothingburger
Biden’s burger, if it is not obvious, is the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, the 2010 law that has allowed tens of millions of pre-retirement Americans to buy health insurance on private exchanges or obtain Medicaid coverage. Because the law was never perfect, and because it has spent the past decade under siege from Republicans, Biden proposes a number of enhancements, including providing a government-run insurance plan as an option alongside private ones. At the Supreme Court, againTrump’s plan is to terminate the ACA and replace it with a blizzard of tweets about nonexistent alternatives, typically to be announced two weeks hence. Trump tried to kill the ACA in Congress but fell one vote short. He has since followed a strategy of having Congress repeal part of the law with the expectation that sympathetic judges would repeal the rest. That approach is expected to reach the Supreme Court, for the third time, just after the election. (10/8)
The New York Times: What Makes Mike Pence’s Complicity So Chilling
Somewhere under the cornfields and backyard hoop courts of Indiana is a small black box holding the conscience of Vice President Mike Pence. He buried it four years ago, when a tape emerged of Donald Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women. Pence and his wife, Karen, whom he reportedly calls “Mother,” had rushed home to pray during the biggest campaign crisis of 2016. Ever since an evangelical conversion in college, Pence had been a beacon of Hoosier holiness, using his talk radio show and his political perch to preach biblical values in the public sphere. (Timothy Egan, 10/9)
The Washington Post: Pence Can’t Do Anything To Justify Trump’s Deadly Choice
A few decades ago, the New Republic set about determining the most boring headlines ever written. The title was won by the New York Times: “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.” High on the list should also be: “Instructive Vice-Presidential Debate.” Yet the Kamala D. Harris/Mike Pence confrontation was occasionally instructive, particularly on their differing approaches to the covid-19 pandemic. Vice President Pence correctly summarized their main point of disagreement: “President Trump and I trust the American people to make choices in the best interests of their health.” (Michael Gerson, 10/8)
The Wall Street Journal: Joe Biden Is The Shutdown Candidate
If a tree falls in an empty forest, will the press blame Donald Trump? Even by the standards of Trump derangement syndrome, the media compulsion during a U.S. president’s tour through Covid-19 to build every molehill into a mountain of duplicity was a new low. Meanwhile, running relentlessly in the background of this Trump-obsessed spectacle is something called SARS-CoV-2. Joe Biden’s campaign is built around promising a return to normalcy. So let us ask Mr. Biden: In the era of Covid, just what will your normalcy look like? (Daniel Henninger, 10/7)
Bloomberg: England's Covid Strategy Is More Scottish Than Swedish
Whenever you hear a policy that touches on pubs in Britain, you know it’s serious. With coronavirus infections and hospitalizations rising, Boris Johnson is preparing new lockdown rules, including shutting down boozers and restaurants in the north of the country. That has sparked a bitter debate among his cabinet, his party and the public about whether his caution is costing too much. As so often in this pandemic, Scotland has gone first, closing pubs and restaurants for a 16-day “circuit-break” to try to curb infections, even though the Scottish infection rate is still far below English cities such as Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle. The new measures for the north of England appear to mirror the Scottish lockdown, only without the time limit. (Therese Raphael, 10/9)
Louisville Courier-Journal: Donald Trump Gets An F, Andy Beshear A B In Handling Virus
As we approach a crucial election, it’s time to think about the sort of leaders we want and need at all levels of government — especially when strong leadership is badly needed to help save lives in a pandemic. On that task, our president has failed on almost all counts. I doubt Vice President Mike Pence really believes what he said in Wednesday night’s debate: “From the very first day, President Donald Trump has put the health of America first.” No, Trump has put his political health first, and that’s backfired to the point of risking his personal heath. His failures on this front are well-documented. One of the better recent summaries came in a letter to Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from one of his predecessors, William Foege, who led the eradication of smallpox. (Al Cross, 10/8)
Fox News: Vice Presidential Debate Showed Democrats Will Pack The Court In The Name Of Diversity
If she (Kamala Harris) and Joe Biden win next month, they will indeed pack the Supreme Court. They'll justify doing that in the name of diversity. They will tell you the Trump administration is racist for not selecting judges based on the color of their skin. They'll tell you that nine is a very racist number of Supreme Court seats. (That's a number some dead White guy come up with a long time ago. See? It's racist. They'll tell you we need to diversify the court. And of course, that means a supermajority of partisan Democrats. That's what they're going to tell you. For now, they're not telling you anything, though. We do know that none of this is going to stop with the Supreme Court. This summer, Barack Obama used a funeral service to tell us that the filibuster is a relic of Jim Crow. Any Senate procedure that limits the power of the Democratic Party is, by definition, racist. That's the new standard. (Tucker Carlson, 10/7)
The Washington Post: Amy Coney Barrett's Confirmation Would Be An LGBTQ Rights Emergency
Five years ago, every marriage in every state became equal under the law, and couples who had long been denied the right to marry could finally do so. In the landmark case of Obergefell v. Hodges, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion that affirmed the “equal dignity” of same-sex couples. Obergefell was decided by a margin of one vote: 5-4. Two of the justices in the majority have since left the court — Kennedy retired in 2018, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last month. Today, as much as marriage equality has become broadly accepted, LGBTQ rights are far from assured. In fact, there is a very real possibility that millions of American lives could be upended — and laws could be written and unwritten — if Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed to replace Ginsburg and if President Trump and Vice President Pence win another four years in office. (Jim Obergefell and Alphonso David, 10/8)
Boston Globe: Correction Officials Thwarting Medical Parole
To consider the governor’s beliefs would be a violation of both the letter and the spirit of the 2018 Criminal Justice Reform Act and of an SJC ruling just last January aimed at telling the DOC that the medical parole provisions of that law are to be followed. The SJC heard several cases this week, each seeking to clarify what was supposed to be a new and more humane way to deal with compassionate release petitions — and in the process to save the state the estimated $320,000 a year that it can cost to house terminally ill and debilitated prisoners. (10/9)
San Francisco Chronicle: California Wants To Talk Reparations? Let’s Start With Land Ownership
The Black experience in this country is under a microscope in 2020. Systemic racism, from ongoing housing discrimination to the disproportionately high incarceration rates among Black men, are key indicators of slavery’s lasting legacy on this country. But the idea of compensating Black people today specifically for what their ancestors experienced as slaves isn’t an easy conversation for most of white America to have. Regardless of how white people feel about it, reparations as a talking point in politics are about to reach peak prevalence in California. Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill creating a path for the state to one day pay reparations of some kind to Black Californians, with an emphasis on folks who are descendants of slaves. (Justin Phillips, 10/8)
