Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
'People Will Die': Biden Campaign Lashes Out At Trump's Maskless Rallies
Joe Biden’s campaign manager attacked President Donald Trump and his team for the packed rallies they've recently resumed, warning that "people will die" because of the acute risk of coronavirus transmission at the largely maskless events. In a POLITICO Playbook interview, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon pointed to indoor campaign events Trump held this week, in direct contradiction with the coronavirus guidelines of his own administration. She also brought up the packed event on the South Lawn of the White House where Trump celebrated the normalization of relations between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. (Oprysko, 9/15)
Joe Biden called President Donald Trump "a fool" Tuesday after the president said on "Fox & Friends" that he thought Biden was "taking something" during the Democratic presidential debates. "He's a fool. The comments were just foolish," Biden said in an interview with NBC affiliate WFLA of Tampa. Earlier in the day, Trump repeated his calls for Biden to take a drug test ahead of their debate in two weeks in an interview on the Fox News morning show. (Gregorian, 9/15)
Joe Biden may not be able to unwind everything President Donald Trump has done to diminish Obamacare. Despite Trump’s failure to repeal Obamacare, he’s forced changes on the health care system that Biden will find hard to immediately reverse, if at all. Trump’s expansion of skimpier health insurance alternatives to Obamacare, curbs on reproductive health funding and rollback of contraception coverage have been upheld in the courts. Efforts to reverse those policies are likely to draw legal battles in a court system that will bear the imprint of Trump’s conservative appointees for years. (Luthi, 9/15)
Jill Biden, wife of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer stopped in Battle Creek on Tuesday for a listening session with military families and a conversation that focused on education and improving health care. "If I have the honor of serving as your first lady, one of my most important priorities will be making sure our veterans and our military members and the caregivers and survivors have what you need," Biden said. (Durnbaugh, 9/15)
As she surveyed the devastation of the Creek Fire, Sen. Kamala Harris said she couldn’t help but notice how little the flames left behind. For some, all that remained standing were the chimneys. “Those chimneys remind me of tombstones,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee said. It’s a landscape that the West is likely to see more of if the country doesn’t accept the reality of climate change science and act accordingly, Harris said Tuesday as she redoubled the Democratic presidential ticket’s new emphasis on the threat that an unchecked output of greenhouse gases poses for people’s lives, health and property. (Gardiner, 9/15)
Also —
Scientific American has endorsed Joe Biden for president, the first time the venerable science magazine has backed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. The endorsement was published in Scientific American’s October issue, in which the magazine’s editors explained their reasons for publicly supporting Biden, adding that they “do not do this lightly.” (Chow, 9/15)