Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Hard Science Thrust Back Into Political Conversations As Coronavirus Likely To Dominate 2020 Race
It now seems apparent that COVID-19 will dominate American life for months to come, quite possibly through the national election in November. That means the disease, and efforts to respond to it, will likewise dominate the 2020 campaign and make it largely about something it has never been about before. That something is science. (Elving, 4/26)
Joe Biden wants a more progressive approach to economic stimulus legislation than Washington has taken so far, including much stricter oversight of the Trump administration, much tougher conditions on business bailouts and long-term investments in infrastructure and climate that have so far been largely absent from congressional debates. In a fiery half-hour interview with POLITICO, the presumptive Democratic nominee sounded a bit like his angrier and less moderate primary rivals, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, though in unexpurgated Biden style. (Grunwald, 4/25)
Presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden is mostly watching from the sidelines as fellow Democrats in Congress and at the state level clash with President Trump over the federal government’s response to the coronavirus. With the election just a little more than six months away, the Democrats making headlines almost every day are Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and governors such as Andrew Cuomo of New York. (Bolton, 4/26)
Despite opposition from President Donald Trump, many local Republican election officials across the country are continuing to push for expanding mail-in voting ahead of November’s election. The novel coronavirus outbreak has made voting in person a health hazard: Wisconsin health officials have linked at least 19 new COVID-19 cases to the state’s primary election earlier this month. (Vasilogambros, 4/24)
Bernie Sanders’s campaign and its supporters are urging New York’s election officials not to cancel its June presidential primary, even though the Vermont senator has suspended his campaign for the Democratic Party’s nomination to face President Trump. Democratic commissioners of the New York State Board of Elections will meet Monday to consider a resolution that would scrap the primary. Mr. Sanders endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden on April 13, but Mr. Sanders said when he suspended his campaign that he hoped to keep amassing delegates to influence the Democratic Party’s platform and rules. (Vielkind, 4/26)
President Trump’s erratic handling of the coronavirus outbreak, the worsening economy and a cascade of ominous public and private polling have Republicans increasingly nervous that they are at risk of losing the presidency and the Senate if Mr. Trump does not put the nation on a radically improved course. The scale of the G.O.P.’s challenge has crystallized in the last week. With 26 million Americans now having filed for unemployment benefits, Mr. Trump’s standing in states that he carried in 2016 looks increasingly wobbly: New surveys show him trailing significantly in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, and he is even narrowly behind in must-win Florida. (Martin and Haberman, 4/25)
Support for Medicare for All has remained consistently strong over the past two years, according to a new Hill-HarrisX poll. Sixty-nine percent of registered voters in the April 19-20 survey support providing medicare to every American, just down 1 percentage point from a Oct. 19-20, 2018 poll, and within the poll's margin of error. (4/24)
