President Trump lashed out at HHS Secretary Alex Azar after senior aides presented him with polling data showing that voters prefer Democrats on health care, Politico reports.
“Trump’s outburst sent White House staff scrambling to convene a meeting on drug pricing this morning with potentially more to come. Some predicted Trump could look to push harder on stalled drug pricing proposals, including one opposed by many in his party.”
President Trump told his health secretary yesterday that he regrets getting involved in the administration’s policy on vaping, Axios reports.
Said Trump: “I should never have done that fucking vaping thing.”
“The administration’s ban on flavored vapes is one of its most prominent health policy decisions, but trying to find a compromise between public health groups and the pro-vaping community caused massive political headaches.”
“The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear the Trump administration’s appeal in a legal fight over religious exemptions for Obamacare’s requirement that employer-based health plans cover birth control,” The Hill reports.
“The U.S. Department of Agriculture has taken another whack at former first lady Michelle Obama’s signature achievement: Establishing stricter nutritional standards for school breakfasts and lunches. And on her birthday,” the Washington Post reports.
“USDA Deputy Under Secretary Brandon Lipps announced new proposed rules for the Food and Nutrition Service that would allow schools to cut the amount of vegetables and fruits required at lunch and breakfasts while giving them the ability to sell more pizza, burgers and fries to students.”
New York Times: “The rule was applauded by food companies but condemned by nutritionists who predicted a comeback for starchy foods like potatoes and the return of daily hamburgers.”
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) told The Root about the struggles she faces with alopecia, a condition that can cause hair loss, and revealed her bald head for the first time in public.
Said Pressley: “I think it’s important that I’m transparent about this new normal.”
“President Trump has misrepresented his position on pre-existing conditions protections in the past, but even by previous standards his tweet on Monday stands out by falsely taking credit for the protections existing in the first place, saying he ‘saved’ them, while actively trying to remove them,” NBC News reports.
Jonathan Chait: “Since he began running for president, Donald Trump has been lying about health care in general, and protections for patients with preexisting conditions in particular. Trump’s long-standing lie is that he has a plan to help people with preexisting conditions afford insurance, or will shortly unveil such a plan. His most recent version of this lie goes even farther. Trump is now saying that he actually created the protection for preexisting conditions, and that Democrats are trying to take it away.”
“This is the literal polar opposite of reality.”
Michael Bloomberg hit back at President Trump’s earlier criticism on Twitter while once again attacking the president on health care.
Said Bloomberg: “Glad to see you’re watching our ads, Donald Trump. I know management isn’t your strong suit, so perhaps you don’t know your Justice Department supports a suit that would undermine protections for pre-existing conditions. Now that you know, why not ask them to drop the suit?”
President Trump lashed out at Michael Bloomberg and his massive ad campaign attacking the president over health care.
Said Trump: “Mini Mike Bloomberg is spending a lot of money on False Advertising. I was the person who saved Pre-Existing Conditions in your Healthcare, you have it now, while at the same time winning the fight to rid you of the expensive, unfair and very unpopular Individual Mandate.”
He added: “And, if Republicans win in court and take back the House of Representatives, your healthcare, that I have now brought to the best place in many years, will become the best ever, by far.”
“The Trump administration and a coalition of conservative states that have been challenging the Affordable Care Act said Friday that there is no reason for the Supreme Court to rush a ruling on the issue this term,” the Washington Post reports.
“They said the court should not grant a motion by the House of Representatives and Democratic-led states to expedite review of a decision by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit last month. The panel struck down the law’s mandate that individuals buy health insurance but sent back to a lower court the question of whether the rest of the statute can stand without it.”
Washington Post: “Bloomberg, who is pumping millions of dollars into his entirely self-funded campaign, is running a single ad in 26 states that details where he stands in the health-care debate that has become a central issue in the Democratic primary. The ad, the only TV message Bloomberg is currently airing, is all about — you guessed it — health insurance.”
“In warm-up remarks introducing Senator Elizabeth Warren at campaign rallies, young volunteers often say they are supporting her because of her plan to transform the health care system through a single-payer ‘Medicare for all’ program. It happened in Des Moines on Saturday and Oklahoma City last week, and in western Iowa cities like Clarinda and Council Bluffs on Sunday,” the New York Times reports.
“But Ms. Warren herself is barely speaking of the proposal. After months of attacks from other candidates, and questions and some blowback from both liberals and moderates, the most ambitious and expensive of Ms. Warren’s many plans — and the one most likely to transform the lives of voters — is just a passing mention in her standard stump speech, rarely explored in depth unless a questioner brings it up.”
“A court ruling last week putting the Affordable Care Act further in jeopardy may provide the opening Democrats have been waiting for to regain the upper hand on health care against Republicans in 2020,” Politico reports.
“A federal appeals court has found the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate unconstitutional, but did not invalidate the entire law, which remains in effect,” CNN reports.
Washington Post: “The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has little immediate practical effect because Congress already has removed the penalty for the insurance requirement as of this year. But the two-to-one ruling leaves the rest of the sprawling statute in limbo heading into a presidential and congressional election year.”
“President Trump intervened to cut the federal government’s Medicaid funding for Puerto Rico as part of a larger government spending deal,” Politico reports.
“The budget deal unveiled by lawmakers this week allocates up to $5.7 billion in Medicaid funds for the island over two years — instead of $12 billion over four years that Republican and Democratic leaders on two key congressional committees had endorsed after months of negotiating a long-term financial path for Puerto Rico.”
“Gov. Andy Beshear (D) ended former Gov. Matt Bevin’s (R) quest to scale back Kentucky’s Medicaid program by requiring ‘able-bodied’ adults to report work hours and other changes critics said would cost up to 100,000 Kentuckians their health coverage,” the Louisville Courier Journal reports.
“By revoking Bevin’s plan, Beshear, fulfilled the last of three actions he pledged to take during his his first week in office to reverse actions of his Republican predecessor — reorganizing the state Education Board, restoring voting rights to some ex-offenders and abolishing the Medicaid plan Bevin rolled out in 2016.”
Paul Krugman: “In 1990, today’s red and blue states had almost the same life expectancy. Since then, however, life expectancy in Clinton states has risen more or less in line with other advanced countries, compared with almost no gain in Trump country. At this point, blue-state residents can expect to live more than four years longer than their red-state counterparts.”
“Is this all about deaths of despair in the eastern heartland? No. Consider our four most populous states. In 1990, Texas and Florida had higher life expectancy than New York and almost matched California; today, they’re far behind.”
“What explains the divergence? Public policy certainly plays some role, especially in recent years, as blue states expanded Medicaid and drastically reduced the number of uninsured, while most red states didn’t. The growing gap in educational levels has also surely played a role: Better-educated people tend to be healthier than the less educated. Beyond that, there has been a striking divergence in behavior and lifestyle that must be affecting mortality. For example, the prevalence of obesity has soared all across America since 1990, but obesity rates are significantly higher in red states.”
“One thing that’s clear, however, is that the facts are utterly inconsistent with the conservative diagnosis of what ails America.”
Joe Biden said that his fast-rising rival Pete Buttigieg “stole” the former vice president’s healthcare policy proposals, Reuters reports.
Said Biden: “He stole it. What would you have done to me? You’d have torn my ears off.”
Washington Post: “The irony is that a candidate whose political identity has been built in part on her reputation as a policy wonk — a potential president who boasts of having a plan for nearly every challenge facing everyday Americans — has been tripped up by a policy issue that has dominated politics and defined her party for years.”
“In some ways, the health-care debate was uniquely suited to entangle Warren, who as a senator had never made the issue a central element of her worldview.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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