Carlson argued that white supremacy is a fake crisis cooked up by Democrats as a campaign ploy. “It’s actually not a real problem in America,” Carlson said, adding later, “This is a hoax, just like the Russia hoax. It’s a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power.”
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Tucker Carlson says white supremacy is a 'hoax' - The Washington Post - 0 views
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violence tied to far-right ideologies have killed roughly as many Americans since 9/11 as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State combined.
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The president has often called Hispanic migration an “invasion” — language echoed in a manifesto police believe the accused El Paso shooter posted online decrying a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
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Carlson has regularly said similar words. He’s used “invasion” rhetoric nine times on his show this year, according to liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America, including describing a surge of migrants at the southern border as “an invasion, and it’s terrifying.
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Carlson has also warned that immigrants could “replace” Americans — an echo, critics say, of the “Great Replacement,” a conspiracy theory that also motivated the deadly March attack in Christchurch, New Zealand that killed 51 people at mosques.
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Carlson framed his argument around the idea that few Americans belong to explicitly white supremacist groups, like the KKK.
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But experts say white supremacist mass killers are more likely today to be radicalized in online forums like 8chan, where the alleged El Paso killer reportedly posted his manifesto, than at organized rallies with white hoods
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FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said the agency had arrested about 100 domestic terrorism suspects in the previous nine months, and most were tied to white supremacist beliefs.
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'It's a Leadership Argument': Coronavirus Reshapes Health Care Fight - The New York Times - 0 views
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Democrats were already talking about health care before the coronavirus, but the outbreak gives new urgency to a central issue for the party.
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The future of America’s health insurance system has already been a huge part of the 2020 presidential race. At campaign events over the past year, voters have shared stories of cancer diagnoses, costly medications and crushing medical debt.
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“Health care was always going to be a big issue in the general election, and the coronavirus epidemic will put health care even more top of mind for voters,”
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That was before more than 68,000 people in the United States tested positive for the coronavirus, grinding the country to a halt, upending lives from coast to coast, and postponing primary elections in many states. The virus has made the stakes, and the differing visions the two parties have for health care in America, that much clearer.
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“Sometimes these health care debates can get a bit abstract, but when it’s an immediate threat to the health of you and your family, it becomes a lot more real.”
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While the Democrats spent much of their primary fighting about whether to push for “Medicare for all” or build on the Affordable Care Act, the coronavirus crisis may streamline the debate to their advantage: At a time when the issue of health care is as pressing as ever, they can present themselves as the party that wants people to have sufficient coverage while arguing that the Republicans do not.
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“A crisis like the coronavirus epidemic highlights the stake that everyone has in the care of the sick,” said Paul Starr, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton who served as a health policy adviser in the Clinton White House. “It really strengthens the Democratic case for expanded health coverage, and that should work, I should think, to Biden’s advantage in a campaign against Trump.”
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The virus is also having dire economic consequences, depriving Mr. Trump of a potent re-election argument rooted in stock market gains and low unemployment numbers. It is testing Mr. Trump’s leadership in the face of a national emergency like nothing he has encountered, and if voters give him poor marks, that could inflict lasting damage on his chances in November’s general election.
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Four years ago, Mr. Trump ran for president promising to repeal the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. But his campaign pledge quickly turned into a debacle in the first year of his presidency when Republicans struggled and ultimately failed to repeal and replace the health law. In the midterm elections the next year, Democrats emphasized health care, highlighting issues like preserving protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and they won control of the House.
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Mr. Trump is particularly vulnerable on the issue of health care. Over the course of his presidency, his administration has repeatedly taken steps to undermine the Affordable Care Act, including by arguing in court that the entire law should be invalidated. The Supreme Court agreed this month to hear an appeal in that case, which is the latest major challenge to the law. The court is not expected to rule until next year, but Democrats point to the Trump administration’s legal position as yet another example of the president’s desire to shred the Affordable Care Act.
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In his campaign, Mr. Biden has already put a focus on health care, promising to build on the Affordable Care Act and create a so-called public option, an optional government plan that consumers could purchase. On the campaign trail, he has talked about his own exposure to the health care system
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In the Democratic primary race, the health care debate has largely focused on the divide between moderate-leaning Democrats looking to build on the Affordable Care Act and progressives calling for Medicare for all, a government-run health insurance program. Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders represent the two sides of that argument.
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In a poll this month by Morning Consult, four in 10 Americans said the coronavirus outbreak had made them more likely to support universal health care proposals in which everyone would receive their health insurance from the government.
How the G.O.P. Sabotaged Obamacare - The New York Times - 0 views
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House Republicans narrowly pass controversial bill to revise Affordable Care Act, movin... - 0 views
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House Republicans narrowly passed a controversial bill to revise Affordable Care Act, helping to fulfill a major campaign promise but sending the measure to an uncertain fate in the closely divided Senate
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Passage in the House by a vote of 217 to 213 capped weeks of fits and starts for the GOP and represented an enormous victory for President Trump, who repeatedly pledged on the campaign trail last year to repeal and replace Obamacare but has struggled to secure legislative wins early in his president
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Democrats, meanwhile, predicted that the measure would be devastating for Americans’ health-care coverage but also, on a political level, for Republicans who voted for it
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Despite more than six years of campaign pledges to undo the ACA and the recent changes to the legislation, several Republican lawmakers admitted Thursday that they have not read the bill or ignored questions about their understanding of the bill that were shouted by reporters. Republicans have accused Democrats in the past of ramming their health-care bill through without giving members a chance to absorb it — but on Thursday they insisted that they are not doing the same thing
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Did Obamacare Cost Clinton the Presidency? - The Atlantic - 0 views
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it would confirm the fears of Kaiser Family Foundation president Drew Altman, who wrote in a July 2016 column in The Wall Street Journal that poor reporting about pre-discount premium increases led people to believe that their own out-of-pocket costs were increasing. “People may read news stories on premium increases as validating criticisms they have heard about the ACA,” Altman wrote. Eighty percent of the people in that month’s Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll had seen reports on premium increases, and over two-thirds of those falsely believed that the increases applied to all plans or just to employer-based coverage. Poll respondents also consistently overestimated premium spikes, mistaking the highs reported for average increases, which in major cities hovered around 10 percent.
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The second piece of Kogan and Wood’s argument is that premium increases would likely have been smaller without what they term Republican “sabotage,” and that the sabotage also affected the election independent of information gaps.
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A campaign by Republican legislators to block market-stabilizing provisions and payments to insurers, block all legislation designed to tweak the health-care law, and promise a full repeal of the bill in 2016 almost certainly contributed to market instability in the exchanges and rising premiums.
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Additionally, Republican governors have mostly been slow to expand Medicaid coverage to low-income residents of their states or have declined to do so at all, decisions that have both decreased the number of potentially satisfied Clinton voters with new coverage and further destabilized markets and prices. The study finds that had Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Wisconsin embraced Medicaid expansion or even pursued slightly less-obstructionist policies, it could very well have tipped those states—and the 2016 election—to Clinton.
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it does suggest a link between health care and voting that experts have long observed. A series of election studies by Harvard researcher Robert Blendon illustrates that while health care isn’t always a major factor in elections, in the cycles when it does rise to be a top priority for many voters, dissatisfaction with costs is the main driver of their decisions. Notably, it doesn’t really matter if voters’ personal costs have really increased; what matters is that they believe prices are rising.
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Derek Chauvin trial jury: What we know about the jurors selected so far - CNN - 0 views
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Five men and two women -- half the jury -- had been chosen to serve during the trial in Minneapolis by the time court adjourned on Friday.
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Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, a White former Minneapolis Police officer, placed his knee on Floyd's neck for an extended period while Floyd pleaded, "I can't breathe." His final moments were captured on video, and his death led to widespread protests against police brutality and racism under the banner Black Lives Matter as well as incidents of unrest and looting.
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Eric Nelson is questioning the prospective jurors for the defense, while Steve Schleicher is questioning them for the prosecution. Judge Peter Cahill is presiding over the trial.
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The first juror selected was a White man in his 20s or 30s who works as a chemist and said he has an analytical mind.The second juror was a woman of color who appears to be in her 20s or 30s, according to a pool reporter's observations in court. She said she was "super excited" about getting the jury questionnaire form.The third juror selected was a White man in his 30s who works as an auditor.The fourth juror was a White man in his late 30s or 40s who said he had a "very favorable" view of Black Lives Matter. He also said he believed police are more truthful than other witnesses. The juror is planning to get married on May 1 and told the court that if he was selected for the trial it could delay the wedding.
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A WSJ Cheat Sheet for Following House Races on a Long Election Night - WSJ - 0 views
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Polls show Democrats are favored to expand their control of the House on Tuesday night. Nonpartisan analysts predict Democrats will win a net of somewhere between five and 20 seats and GOP strategists said keeping Democrats’ gains in the single digits would be a victory for them.
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Both parties are closely watching the race to replace retiring GOP Rep. Susan Brooks in Indiana. Donald Trump won this district, located in the northern Indianapolis suburbs, by 12 points in 2016, and a Democratic victory there could signal that his weakness with suburban women is weighing down Republicans lower on the ballot.
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Polls show some races are tight in places that President Trump won in 2016. They include two open seats currently held by Republicans: Virginia’s Fifth District, where Democrat Cameron Webb is running against Republican Bob Good, in a mostly rural district currently held by Republican Rep.
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Republican groups have invested millions in this cycle to win back seats they lost in 2018, forcing Democrats to spend significantly to defend these first-term lawmakers.
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Democrats took back many GOP-held suburban seats in the 2018 midterm election and are hoping to clean up the rest on Tuesday night.
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In Arkansas, GOP Rep. French Hill is facing a tougher-than-expected race against state Sen. Joyce Elliott in a district that Mr. Trump won by 11 points in 2016.
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There are 94 GOP women running in the general election, a record for the party, breaking its previous high mark of 53 GOP women who made it through the primary elections in 2018
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Democrats have almost universally focused their messaging on health care and addressing the coronavirus pandemic, while Republicans have attacked Democrats for being socialists or espousing liberal ideas from the party’s far-left flank, such as defunding the police. The message that is most successful could help frame postelection priorities.
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Democrats, meanwhile, have focused on Republicans’ efforts to undermine the Affordable Care Act, arguing they could jeopardize protections for people with pre-existing conditions. Democrats are running ads focusing on this popular part of the ACA in districts such as GOP Rep. Chip Roy’s Texas district, where he is being challenged by former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis.
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Trump vs. Biden's health care plans: Where do the candidates stand? | Fox News - 0 views
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The coronavirus pandemic has brought health care to the forefront of the 2020 presidential election.
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Trump has backed a lawsuit to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the landmark health care law also known as ObamaCare, and repeatedly pledged to nominate Supreme Court justices who would rule against it.
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Biden, meanwhile, has laid out a plan to expand the ACA by adding a public option that's open to all Americans but preserves the option for individuals to keep their private insurance.
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The Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments on the latest legal challenge to the decades-old law on Nov. 10; if the court does strike down the law, the president and Congress will need to move quickly to address the tens of millions of Americans who could lose their health coverage.
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Trump, who campaigned on slashing drug prices in 2016, supports enacting a faster approval process for new generic drugs to drive down prices and has signed an executive order to import drugs from countries with lower prices.
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Biden, meanwhile, has proposed allowing Medicare to negotiate discounts for drugs, in part by setting up an independent review board that would be in charge of determining the value of new drugs by comparing their price tag in other countries.
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Trump has also looked to more broadly reduce health-care costs, in part by issuing a rule that forces hospitals to report the rates they strike with individual insurers for all services, including drugs, supplies, facility fees and care by doctors who work for the facility. If the hospitals fail to comply, they could be forced to pay a $300 per day fine.
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Biden aims to increase competition in the health-care market by using antitrust authority to reduce consolidation among providers. The candidate has called for establishing a public health-care option, which would allow for price negotiations with providers and create leverage to obtain lower prices.
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Biden frequently says that he would "listen to science" in handling the virus outbreak, contrasting himself from Trump, who frequently disagrees publicly with the nation's leading infectious experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci.
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If elected, Biden has said that he would enforce a "national mask mandate," although he's conceded that it would almost face, and likely fall to, a legal challenge. Trump does not support a mask mandate and has largely left the pandemic response up to individual states.
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The American Nightmare - The Atlantic - 0 views
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Another racial text—published by the nation’s premier social-science organization, the American Economic Association, and classified by the historian Evelynn Hammonds as “one of the most influential documents in social science at the turn of the 20th century”—elicited more shock in 1896.
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“Nothing is more clearly shown from this investigation than that the southern black man at the time of emancipation was healthy in body and cheerful in mind,” Frederick Hoffman wrote in Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro. “What are the conditions thirty years after?” Hoffman concluded from “the plain language of the facts” that black Americans were better off enslaved. They are now “on the downward grade,” he wrote, headed toward “gradual extinction.”
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Hoffman knew his work was “a most severe condemnation of moderate attempts of superior races to lift inferior races to their elevated positions.” He rejected that sort of assimilationist racism, in favor of his own segregationist racism. The data “speak for themselves,” he wrote. White Americans had been naturally selected for health, life, and evolution. Black Americans had been naturally selected for disease, death, and extinction. “Gradual extinction,” the book concluded, “is only a question of time.
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With its pages and pages of statistical charts, Race Traits helped catapult Hoffman into national and international prominence as the “dean” of American statisticians. In his day, Hoffman “achieved greatness,” assessed his biographer. “His career illustrates the fulfillment of the ‘American dream.’”
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e don’t see any American dream,” Malcolm X said in 1964. “We’ve experienced only the American nightmare.”
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A nightmare is essentially a horror story of danger, but it is not wholly a horror story. Black people experience joy, love, peace, safety. But as in any horror story, those unforgettable moments of toil, terror, and trauma have made danger essential to the black experience in racist America. What one black American experiences, many black Americans experience. Black Americans are constantly stepping into the toil and terror and trauma of other black Americans
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Because they know: They could have been them; they are them. Because they know it is dangerous to be black in America, because racist Americans see blacks as dangerous.
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Ask the souls of the 10,000 black victims of COVID-19 who might still be living if they had been white. Ask the souls of those who were told the pandemic was the “great equalizer.” Ask the souls of those forced to choose between their low-wage jobs and their treasured life. Ask the souls of those blamed for their own death. Ask the souls of those who disproportionately lost their jobs and then their life as others disproportionately raged about losing their freedom to infect us all. Ask the souls of those ignored by the governors reopening their states.
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The American nightmare has everything and nothing to do with the pandemic. Ask the souls of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd. Step into their souls.
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History ignored you. Hoffman ignored you. Racist America ignored you. The state did not want you to breathe. But your loved ones did not ignore you. They did not ignore your nightmare. They share the same nightmare.
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Your loved ones are protesting your murder, and the president calls for their murder, calls them “THUGS,” calls them “OUT OF STATE” agitators. Others call the violence against property senseless—but not the police violence against you that drove them to violence. Others call both senseless, but take no immediate steps to stem police violence against you, only to stem the violence against property and police.
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Mayors issue curfews. Governors rattle their sabers. The National Guard arrives to protect property and police. Where was the National Guard when you faced violent police officers, violent white terrorists, the violence of racial health disparities, the violence of COVID-19—all the racist power and policy and ideas that kept the black experience in the American nightmare for 400 years?
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perhaps the worst of the nightmare is knowing that racist Americans will never end it. Anti-racism is on you, and only you. Racist Americans deny your nightmare, deny their racism, claim you have a dream like a King, when even his dream in 1967 “turned into a nightmare.”
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Black people are supposed to be feared by all, murdered by police officers, lynched by citizens, and killed by COVID-19 and other lethal diseases. It has been proved. No there there. Black life is the “hopeless problem,” as Hoffman wrote.
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In the first nationwide compilation of racial crime data, Hoffman used the higher arrest and incarceration rates of black Americans to argue that they are, by their very nature and behavior, a dangerous and violent people—as racist Americans still say today.
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Hoffman compiled racial health disparities to argue that black Americans are, by their very nature and behavior, a diseased and dying people. Hoffman cataloged higher black mortality rates and showed that black Americans were more likely to suffer from syphilis, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases than white Americans.
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While black Americans view their experience as the American nightmare, racist Americans view black Americans as the American nightmare.
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Racist Americans, especially those racists who are white, view themselves as the embodiment of the American dream. All that makes America great. All that will make America great again. All that will keep America great.
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Their American dream—that this is a land of equal opportunity, committed to freedom and equality, where police officers protect and serve—is a lie. Their American dream—that they have more because they are more, that when black people have more, they were given more—is a lie. Their American dream—that they have the civil right to kill black Americans with impunity and that black Americans do not have the human right to live—is a lie.
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Take Minneapolis. Black residents are more likely than white residents to be pulled over, arrested, and victimized by its police force. Even as black residents account for 20 percent of the city’s population, they make up 64 percent of the people Minneapolis police restrained by the neck since 2018, and more than 60 percent of the victims of Minneapolis police shootings from late 2009 to May 2019. According to Samuel Sinyangwe of Mapping Police Violence, Minneapolis police are 13 times more likely to kill black residents than to kill white residents, one of the largest racial disparities in the nation. And these police officers rarely get prosecuted.
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A typical black family in Minneapolis earns less than half as much as a typical white family—a $47,000 annual difference that is one of the largest racial disparities in the nation. Statewide, black residents are 6 percent of the Minnesota population, but 30 percent of the coronavirus cases as of Saturday, one of the largest black case disparities in the nation, according to the COVID Racial Data Tracker.
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In April, many Americans chose the racist explanation: saying black people were not taking the coronavirus as seriously as white people, until challenged by survey data and majority-white demonstrations demanding that states reopen. Then they argued that black Americans were disproportionately dying from COVID-19 because they have more preexisting conditions, due to their uniquely unhealthy behaviors. But according to the Foundation for AIDS Research, structural factors such as employment, access to health insurance and medical care, and the air and water quality in neighborhoods are drivers of black infections and deaths, and not “intrinsic characteristics of black communities or individual-level factors.”
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Americans should be asking: Why are so many unarmed black people being killed by police while armed white people are simply arrested? Why are officials addressing violent crime in poorer neighborhoods by adding more police instead of more jobs? Why are black (and Latino) people during this pandemic less likely to be working from home; less likely to be insured; more likely to live in trauma-care deserts, lacking access to advanced emergency care; and more likely to live in polluted neighborhoods? The answer is what the Frederick Hoffmans of today refuse to believe: racism.
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Amy Coney Barrett hearing: Takeaways from Wednesday - CNNPolitics - 0 views
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Barrett again declined to preview how she would rule on potential cases during her confirmation hearing, as she did for the previous two days, seeking to portray herself as an independent judge without an agenda.
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Lindsey Graham seemed to suggest that Barrett would vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act in an upcoming case because of a judicial principle known as severability, defending himself from political attacks in his tough reelection race against Democrat Jaime Harrison.
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"From a conservative point of view, generally speaking, we want legislative bodies to make laws, not judges," Graham said later. "Would it be further true that if you can preserve a statue you try to, to the extent possible?"
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California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Judiciary Committee's top Democrat, also asked the nominee about the severability doctrine. Barrett explained to Feinstein that the doctrine was like a game of "Jenga," where a court must decide whether a law can stand if it pulls out part of it.
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Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy said that Barrett had not written or spoken in defense of the ACA but had publicly criticized the court and Chief Justice John Roberts for voting to uphold sections of it. Barrett said on Wednesday she had previously spoken as an academic rather than as a judge, and had "never had occasion to speak on the policy question."
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Barrett later told Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, "I have no animus to, or agenda for, the Affordable Care Act."
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Barrett said, "No one is above the law," but declined to answer the question, saying it "has never been litigated."
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"So because it would be opining on an open question when I haven't gone through the judicial process to decide it, it's not one in which I can offer a view."
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Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons asked Barrett if she agreed with her mentor and former boss, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, that Griswold v. Connecticut, which established that married couples have a right to obtain and use contraception in the privacy of their own home, was wrongly decided.
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She explained that it's "unthinkable that any legislature would pass such a law" prohibiting the use of birth control and that it's "very unlikely" a lower court would buck the Supreme Court precedent.
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Barrett said that "the only reason that it's even worth asking that question" is because the 1965 case underpins the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade, which found a constitutional right to abortion. "So because Griswold involves substantive due process, an area that remains subject to litigation to the country, I don't think it's an issue or case that I can opine on," she said. "But nor do I think Griswold is in danger of going anywhere."
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California Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, asked Barrett about Shelby County v. Holder, which allowed some jurisdictions with a history of voter suppression to escape additional federal scrutiny under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
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"I think racial discrimination still exists in the United States, and I think we've seen evidence of that this summer," added Barrett.Harris later asked Harris if Covid-19 is infectious, whether smoking causes cancer and whether climate change is "happening and is threatening the air we breathe and the water we drink."
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"I will not do that," she said. "I will not express a view on a matter of public policy, especially one that is politically controversial because that's inconsistent with the judicial role as I have explained."
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Republican senators appeared confident on Wednesday that they will confirm the Notre Dame law professor and judge on the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals by the end of the month, giving conservatives a strong 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court.
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Democrats' Arguments Against Amy Coney Barrett : Live: Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Cour... - 0 views
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"You are moving ahead with this nomination because you can. But might does not make right," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on Thursday. "In your hearts, you know that's what's happening here is not right ... history will haunt this raw exercise of power." In 2016, Republicans used their majority in the upper chamber to deny then-President Barack Obama a Supreme Court nominee, waiting until after Donald Trump had been elected and he could submit a name of his own. And although senators including the Judiciary Committee's chairman, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., had suggested they wouldn't do that again, they are.
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In Democrats' telling, Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., need Barrett confirmed as soon as possible so she will be in position to hear arguments in a case in November that could affect the Affordable Care Act.
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She, Coons, Blumenthal and the other Judiciary Committee members warn that the Barrett-era Supreme Court could be consequential across a number of other issues, too, and they cited Barrett's unwillingness to give substantive answers about climate change, voting practices and even Trump's claim about his power to pardon himself.
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There has been little tension about Barrett's nomination since a sufficient number of members of the Senate majority suggested they would go along generally and support her specifically, and she appears on track to be confirmed.
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"These are lifetime appointments. They last for decades. What is done here will affect policies long after our lifetimes end," she said. "There's never been a situation quite like this."
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Trump vs. Biden On Health Care: Compare Their Platforms : Shots - Health News : NPR - 0 views
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"President Trump has — from Day 1 — pushed for repealing or overturning the ACA, and Joe Biden is pushing to build and expand on it,"
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Biden would allow people to enroll in Medicare at age 60 and would also try to create a new federal health program similar to Medicare, which he calls a public option.
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Biden has remarked often that he would "listen to science" in handling the pandemic, drawing a contrast with Trump, who has repeatedly contradicted his top health officials.
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What Is Biden's 100-Day Plan? : NPR - 0 views
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Biden ran a heavily policy-focused campaign, releasing dozens of lengthy and ambitious plans ranging from large-scale economic and environmental initiatives to broad actions on racial justice, education and health care.
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Biden heads into office with strategies to address the COVID-19 crisis and the search for a vaccine as well.
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The sheer volume of Biden's plans could make it a challenge to execute them all. On immigration alone, he has proposed more than a dozen initiatives to complete within 100 days of taking office, a feat that could prove difficult to execute.
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He will likely need to focus more immediately on issues that could attract bipartisan support, such as providing COVID-19 relief and improving U.S. infrastructure.
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Days after becoming president-elect, Biden announced a team of advisers that will spearhead his pandemic response once he takes office. The task force will be led by Dr. David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner; former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy; and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine.
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"I'll ask the new Congress to put a bill on my desk by the end of January with all the resources to see how both our public health and economic response can be seen through the end,"
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Biden has said he'll start working to install "an effective distribution plan" for a potential COVID-19 vaccine on the first day of his presidency. His plan would spend $25 billion on vaccine production and disbursement, and calls for an eventual vaccine to be free for all Americans.
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Biden has pledged that on his first day as president he will raise corporate income taxes to 28% — compared with the current 21% rate set by the GOP-led tax cuts of 2017. Also, this promise falls under Biden's larger proposed tax plan, which stresses that Americans making less than $400,000 would not pay more in taxes.
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Biden has said that on his first day as president he will produce comprehensive immigration legislation that creates a pathway to citizenship for 11 million migrants living in the U.S. illegally. It would also provide a pathway to citizenship for people commonly known as DREAMers, who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
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The president-elect has vowed to stop the practice of separating immigrant families trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico.
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Biden said he will institute a national police oversight commission within his first 100 days of taking office.
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reduce the use of mandatory minimum sentencing for nonviolent offenses and institute policies geared at lowering recidivism.
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A large part of Biden's health care proposal offers a new public option plan that builds on the existing Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. But the ACA's fate remains in question during the rest of Trump's term and into next year. On Nov. 10, the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments against the ACA from the Trump administration and multiple states. If the justices side with Trump next year when they make their decision, Biden's plans for health care could completely change
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Notably, the president-elect has expressed support for the College for All Act, proposed in 2017 by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., which would eliminate tuition at public colleges and universities for families making up to $125,000.
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Key Justices Signal Support for Affordable Care Act - The New York Times - 0 views
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WASHINGTON — The bulk of the Affordable Care Act, the sprawling 2010 health care law that is President Barack Obama’s defining domestic legacy, appeared likely to survive its latest encounter with the Supreme Court in arguments on Tuesday.
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“It does seem fairly clear that the proper remedy would be to sever the mandate provision and leave the rest of the law in place,” said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
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Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. made a similar point. “Congress left the rest of the law intact when it lowered the penalty to zero,” he said.
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Democratic states and the House, which intervened in the case to defend the health law, asked the Supreme Court to intervene, saying a prompt decision was needed to remove the uncertainty caused by the lower courts’ decisions.
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In a 2017 law review article, she questioned the chief justice’s 2012 opinion. “Chief Justice Roberts pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute,” Justice Barrett wrote.In an interview after the 2015 decision, she said, “I think the dissent has the better of the legal argument.”“That’s not to say the result isn’t preferable,” Judge Barrett said at the time. “It’s clearly a good result that these millions of Americans won’t lose their tax subsidies.”
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Tens of millions of Americans gained insurance coverage under the 2010 law, which includes popular provisions on guaranteed coverage for pre-existing medical conditions, emergency care, prescription drugs and maternity care. Republican state officials, backed by the Trump administration, say that a key provision of the law is unconstitutional, and that this means the whole law must fall.
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The law’s defenders are hoping that the Republican challengers cannot run the table on three separate legal arguments they would need to win: that they have suffered the sort of injury that gives them standing to sue; that the zeroing out of the tax penalty made the individual mandate unconstitutional; and that the rest of the law cannot stand without the individual mandate.
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The Republicans also face the challenge of the enormous practical effects of striking down the law. Doing so would increase the ranks of the uninsured in the United States by more than 20 million people — a nearly 70 percent increase — according to new estimates from the Urban Institute.
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The biggest loss of coverage would be among low-income adults who became eligible for Medicaid under the law after all but a dozen states expanded the program to include them. But millions would also lose private insurance, including young adults whom the law allowed to stay on their parents’ plans until they turned 26 and families whose income was modest enough to qualify for subsidies under the law that help pay their monthly premiums.
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Tuesday’s arguments, which will be heard by telephone, are scheduled for 80 minutes but are likely to last two hours or longer. Michael J. Mongan, the solicitor general of California, representing a coalition of liberal-leaning states, will defend the law; Kyle D. Hawkins, the solicitor general of Texas, representing a coalition of conservative-leaning states, will urge the justices to strike it down.
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Roberts, Kavanaugh appear skeptical of striking down Obamacare at Supreme Court: "Not o... - 0 views
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with the future of the 2010 landmark health care law championed by Democrats and attacked by Republicans
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two justices on the conservative wing of the bench expressing skepticism toward arguments the Affordable Care Act should be struck down in its entirety.
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Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of the three justices on the court appointed by President Trump, both signaled they disagree with arguments from Republican-led states that Obamacare should fall if its individual mandate is deemed unconstitutional.
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It's hard for you to argue that Congress intended the entire act to fall if the mandate were struck down when the same Congress that lowered the penalty to zero did not even try to repeal the rest of the act,
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The chief justice added that he believes Congress wanted the Supreme Court to strike down the full law, "but that's not our job."
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"Under the severability question, we ask ourselves whether Congress would want the rest of the law to survive if an unconstitutional provision were severed," Roberts said. "And here Congress left the rest of the law intact when it lowered the penalty to zero. That seems to be compelling evidence on the question
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I tend to agree with you, this is a very straight forward case for severability under our precedents, meaning that we would excise the mandate and leave the rest of the act in place,"
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it does seem fairly clear that the proper remedy would be to sever the mandate provision and leave the rest of the act in place."
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third attempt by Republicans for the Supreme Court to dismantle the 2010 health care law that has extended health insurance coverage to millions of Americans and provides protections to people with pre-existing conditions.
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The states argue the rest of Obamacare should topple if the mandate is struck down, as it is "inextricably intertwined" with the remainder of the law and cannot be severed from it.
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Congress's change to the law "modified the terms of the choice presented by [the mandate] — by allowing individuals to freely decide whether to buy health insurance without facing any tax assessment if they do not."
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"It would seem a big deal to say that if you can point to injury with respect to one provision and you can concoct some kind of inseverability argument, then it allows you to challenge anything else in the statute,
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Isn't that something that the United States should be very worried about and isn't it something that really cuts against all of our doctrine?"
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Opinion | Fixing Health Care Starts With the Already Insured - The New York Times - 0 views
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Health insurance is supposed to provide financial protection against the medical costs of poor health. Yet many insured people still face the risk of enormous medical bills for their “covered” care. A team of researchers estimated that as of mid-2020, collections agencies held $140 billion in unpaid medical bills, reflecting care delivered before the Covid-19 pandemic
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that’s more than the amount held by collection agencies for all other consumer debt from nonmedical sources combined
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in any given month, about 11 percent of Americans younger than 65 are uninsured. But more than twice that number — one in four — will be uninsured for at least some time over a two-year period.
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Perversely, health insurance — the very purpose of which is to provide a measure of stability in an uncertain world — is itself highly uncertain. And while the Affordable Care Act substantially reduced the share of Americans who are uninsured at a given time, we found that it did little to reduce the risk of insurance loss among the currently insured.
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them do. The experience with the health insurance mandate under the Affordable Care Act makes that clear.
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The risk of losing coverage is an inevitable consequence of a lack of universal coverage. Whenever there are varied pathways to eligibility, there will be many people who fail to find their path.
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About six in 10 uninsured Americans are eligible for free or heavily discounted insurance coverage. Yet they remain uninsured. Lack of information about which of the array of programs they are eligible for, along with the difficulties of applying and demonstrating eligibility, mean that the coverage programs are destined to deliver less than they could.
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incremental reforms won’t work. Over a half-century of such well-intentioned, piecemeal policies has made clear that continuing this approach represents the triumph of hope over experience,
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Coverage needs to be free at the point of care — no co-pays or deductibles — because leaving patients on the hook for large medical costs is contrary to the purpose of insurance.
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But it turns out there’s an important practical wrinkle with asking patients to pay even a very small amount for some of their universally covered care: There will always be people who can’t manage even modest co-pays.
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Finally, coverage must be basic because we are bound by the social contract to provide essential medical care, not a high-end experience.
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as a share of its economy, the United States spends about twice as much on health care as other high-income countries. But in most other wealthy countries, this care is primarily financed by taxes, whereas only about half of U.S. health care spending is financed by taxes. For those of you following the math, half of twice as much is … well, the same amount of taxpayer-financed spending on health care as a share of the economy. In other words, U.S. taxes are already paying for the cost of universal basic coverage. Americans are just not getting it. They could be.
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at a high level, the key elements of our proposal are ones that every high-income country (and all but a few Canadian provinces) has embraced: guaranteed basic coverage and the option for people to purchase upgrades.
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Opinion | Bidencare Is a Really Big Deal - The New York Times - 0 views
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President Biden has made Obamacare an even bigger deal, in a way that is improving life for millions of Americans.
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The Biden administration just announced that 21 million people have enrolled for coverage through the A.C.A.’s health insurance marketplaces, up from around 12 million on the eve of the pandemic. America still doesn’t have the universal coverage that is standard in other wealthy nations, but some states, including Massachusetts and New York, have gotten close.
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And this gain, unlike some of the other good things happening, is all on Biden, who both restored aid to people seeking health coverage and enhanced a key aspect of the system.
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Biden, as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, largely resolved these problems, reducing maximum premium payments (net of subsidies) and eliminating the cliff at 400 percent. The result is to make health insurance coverage substantially more affordable, especially for middle-income Americans who previously earned too much to be eligible for subsidies. Hence the surge in marketplace enrollments.
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