Pelosi-Mnuchin Stimulus Talks Come Down to the Wire

By Yuval Rosenberg

House Stimulus Vote Delayed as Pelosi-Mnuchin Talks Come Down
to the Wire

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin failed to reach an agreement on a coronavirus relief
package Wednesday.

Following a roughly 90-minute meeting — the first time the pair
had met in person in more than a month — Pelosi said negotiations
will continue, and the House pushed off a scheduled final vote
Wednesday evening on the slimmed-down, $2.2 trillion stimulus bill
Democrats introduced earlier this week. The vote, now slated for
Thursday, would be largely symbolic in the absence of an agreement
with the White House, since the Democrat’s package has virtually no
chance of being taken up by the Republican-controlled Senate.

"Today, Secretary Mnuchin and I had an extensive conversation
and we found areas where we are seeking further clarification. Our
conversations will continue," Pelosi said in a statement.

Mnuchin sounded cautiously optimistic after the meeting, saying
the negotiators had "made a lot of progress over the last few days"
and "we’re going to see where we end up" after more talks. In an
interview with CNBC earlier in the day, Mnuchin said the White
House was interested in a stimulus package similar to the $1.5
trillion bill put forth two weeks ago by the bipartisan Problem
Solvers Caucus. However, there were no details about the offer
Mnuchin presented to Pelosi in the meeting.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sounded a more
pessimistic note Wednesday, telling reporters that a deal remained
elusive. "We’re very, very far apart," he said.

Senate Votes to Avert Shutdown

Facing a midnight deadline to avoid a government shutdown,
the Senate on Wednesday evening
passed a stopgap spending bill that will keep the
lights on until December 11. Passed by the House last week, the
legislation is expected to head to President Trump’s desk later
this evening.

A Few Health Care Highlights From a Debate Filled With
Lowlights

A hot mess. A train wreck. A
national embarrassment. Just plain
annoying. It’s clear that the first presidential
debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden
was painful to watch. But before you look to purge all memory of
the disturbing debacle — and President Trump’s
outlandish, hectoring performance won’t soon be
forgotten — here’s a look at some of the little substance, on
health care specifically, that got intermingled with the
interruptions, insults and mockery.

Protections for those with preexisting conditions: Biden
used the first question of the night, about Trump’s nomination of
Amy Coney Barrett to fill the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s
Supreme Court seat, to say that the future of the Affordable Care
Act is at stake.

The Trump administration is backing a challenge to the Obama
health care law that will be heard by the court on November 10.

Biden said that the law’s protections for people with
preexisting medical conditions could be wiped out and that there
are 100 million people with pre-existing conditions. Trump disputed
the number, but as Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation

points out, 54 million non-elderly Americans have a
pre-existing condition that made them uninsurable before the
Affordable Care Act and as many as 133 million had a condition that
could have led insurers to decline coverage, exclude coverage of
the condition or charge significantly higher premiums.

Biden and "socialist medicine": Trump accused Biden of
pursuing "socialist medicine," trying to tie Biden to those in the
Democratic Party who are pushing for a single-payer "Medicare for
All" system. Biden, who does not support a single-payer system and
is instead proposing a public option, pushed back. "The party is
me. Right now, I am the Democratic party," he said.

When asked by moderator Chris Wallace whether his public option
would, as Republicans and insurers argue, lead to the end of
private insurance "and create a government takeover of health,"
Biden said the public option would be limited to low-income people
who would be eligible for Medicaid but whose states have not
expanded the program under the Affordable Care Act. The Democratic
platform says that the public option would also be available to
people who are offered coverage through their jobs, Modern
Healthcare
notes.

Trump’s missing health care plan:
Wallace said that the president has never issued a
comprehensive plan to replace Obamacare. "Of course I have," Trump
said. "The individual mandate. Excuse me. I got rid of the
individual mandate, which was a big chunk of Obamacare."

Wallace pressed for more, and Trump touted his
administration’s yet-to-be-implemented plans to lower drug prices.
"Drug prices will be coming down 80 or 90%," he claimed. Trump also
claimed he has brought down the price of insulin. "I’m getting it
for so cheap it’s like water," he said.

The Trump administration has cut insulin costs for some
seniors through a plan capping out-of-pocket costs at $35 a month,
but as STAT’s Nicholas Florko
explains, for most people, insulin still costs just as
much as before.

Quote of the Day

"Last night’s debate made clear that additional structure
should be added to the format of the remaining debates to ensure a
more orderly discussion of the issues."

– A statement
from the Commission on Presidential Debates, following the chaotic
first debate Tuesday between President Trump and former Vice
President Joe Biden. The CPD added that it "will be carefully
considering the changes that it will adopt and will announce those
measures shortly."

A Deep Dive Into the K-Shaped Recovery

Digging into the data on the coronavirus economy, a team
of reporters at The Washington Post found enormous variation in how
the recession is playing out for different income
groups.

"The economic collapse sparked by the pandemic is
triggering the most unequal recession in modern U.S. history,
delivering a mild setback for those at or near the top and a
depression-like blow for those at the bottom," the reporters said
Wednesday.

The analysis is loaded with detailed data and
fascinating graphs, including this chart, which shows just how
severe job losses have been for low-income workers compared to
earlier recessions.


Read the full analysis here.

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