Half a Million Dead by April?

By Yuval Rosenberg

Congress Looks to Punt Funding Bill Into Next Week

With just a few days to go before significant parts of the
federal government are forced to shut down, lawmakers are
contemplating a short-term bill to give themselves a little more
time to work out a full-year funding package, as well as an
agreement on Covid-19 relief.

The stopgap funding measure, known as a continuing resolution,
would keep the government open until December 18, a week beyond the
current December 11 deadline.

Although there were hopes that talks on the full-year funding
bill would conclude this week, they have hit a rough patch, The
Washington Post
reported Monday, with negotiators unable to agree
on more than a dozen issues, including funding for President
Trump’s border wall with Mexico.

“I am disappointed that we have not yet reached agreement
on government funding,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD)
tweeted
Monday. “The House will vote on Wednesday on a one-week CR to keep
government open while negotiations continue.”

Closing In on a Covid Relief Bill

Congressional leaders are still hoping to attach a Covid relief
package to the annual government funding bill, with the goal of
passing both before lawmakers leave town for the holidays.
Negotiators are using the $908 billion coronavirus relief package
offered by a bipartisan group of lawmakers last week as a starting
point and may release a detailed summary of their bill as soon as
Monday night, with legislative text coming later in the week.

The details are still in flux, but reports indicate that the
relief package would include hundreds of billions for the
unemployed, state and local governments, and small businesses.
Smaller amounts would be allocated for rental assistance, schools,
child care and other issues.

The unemployment provision would provide $300 per week in
federal benefits for 16 weeks, but would not be retroactive.
Self-employed and gig workers would be included in the program.

No $1,200 checks: One thing the framework does not
include is more direct aid for individuals, and that’s sparking
some opposition to the bill. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said last
week that he would not support a bill that fails to provide another
round of checks.

“[D]uring the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,
when over half of our workers are living paycheck to paycheck, when
one out of four workers are either unemployed or make less than
$20,000 a year, when 92 million Americans are uninsured or
under-insured, when tens of millions of people face eviction and
when hunger in America is exploding, it is unacceptable that the
Manchin-Romney proposal does not even do what the CARES Act did and
provide, at the very least, a $1,200 direct payment to working
class Americans and $500 for their kids,” Sanders said in a

statement.

On the other side of the aisle, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) also
said he would not support a bill lacking direct aid — and has
lobbied President Trump to veto it. “I said, ‘I think it's vital
that any relief include direct payments, and I'm not gonna vote for
it if it doesn't,’” Hawley
told Politico Monday, recounting his conversation
with Trump. “And I also urged him to veto any bill that did not
have direct payments in it.”

The president, however, has reportedly signaled that he would
sign a relief bill, even without another round of direct support.
“President Trump has indicated that he would sign a $908 billion
package — there’s only one $908 billion package out there and it’s
ours,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said Sunday.

A “tricky path:” Despite the recent progress, there are
still some serious issues to resolve. Republicans are pushing for
liability shields for businesses that many progressives oppose,
while Democrats want more money for state and local governments
than some conservatives are willing to provide. This means the
Covid relief package “has really a tricky path,” as Politico put it
Monday.

“I think we’ll get there,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), who is
backing the bipartisan compromise bill, said Sunday, adding, “I
think we may have to go through a few more days of
drama.”

Biden Unveils Health Team, With Becerra as HHS Secretary

President-elect Joe Biden on Monday announced nominations for
top members of his health care team, the officials who will be
responsible for leading the fight against the coronavirus pandemic,
distributing vaccines and implementing the new administration’s
plans to strengthen the Affordable Care Act.

Biden’s picks include:

Xavier Becerra as secretary of the Department of Health
and Human Services. Becerra, 62, served 12 terms in Congress and
has been California’s attorney general since 2017. In that role,
has been a leading defender of the Affordable Care Act, bringing
legal challenges to Trump administration efforts to weaken and
invalidate the law, including a case now before the Supreme Court.
If confirmed by the Senate, Becerra would be the first Latino to
lead the department. He had been rumored to be a candidate to be
Biden’s attorney general.

There are already questions about Becerra’s qualifications for
the job, given that he has little health policy experience and
hasn’t run a bureaucracy as large as HHS, which has more than
80,000 employees. Becerra “has a thinner management
resume than previous HHS secretaries like former governors
Tommy Thompson, Mike Leavitt and Kathleen Sebelius,” Politico

notes. “Meanwhile, Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Alex
Azar had spent considerable time as high-level administration
officials and in senior roles at large organizations before they
were tapped to run HHS.”

But Biden faced pressure to include more Latinos in his Cabinet,
and the president-elect reportedly placed significant importance on
Becerra’s track record of fighting to support Obamacare and expand
access to health care. Some health policy experts lauded the
choice. “You need a leader, manager,” Andy Slavitt, who led
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under Obama,

told The Washington Post. “He’s just a great fit.
Right temperament.”

Larry Levitt, executive vice president of health policy at
the Kaiser Family Foundation,
said that Becerra “has been perhaps the biggest thorn in
President Trump's side on the ACA, reproductive health, and
immigrant rights. If confirmed, he will have an opportunity to
overturn much of what Trump has done.” He added: “It's been more
under the radar, but Xavier Becerra has also aggressively gone
after anti-competitive practices in the hospital industry that keep
prices high.”

Becerra will face questions from Republicans about
qualifications and his past support for Medicare for All. “I will
meet with Xavier Becerra to ask how his political donations from
insurance companies and his support for abortions and Medicare for
All makes him qualified to serve as the Secretary of Health and
Human Services,” Indiana Senator Mike Braun (R-IN), who sits on the
Senate health committee, said, according to
Bloomberg News.

Vivek Murthy as surgeon general. Murthy held the same job
under President Barack Obama.

Rochelle Walensky, an infectious disease expert at
Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard
Medical School, as director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. Walensky has been a vocal critic of the Trump
administration’s pandemic response.

“In the Biden administration, the CDC will take on a much larger
and public role,” Politico
reports, “with plans to revive regular media
briefings and give a central role to career officials who have been
pushed aside by President Donald Trump. Biden and his advisers have
emphasized that they want to prioritize scientists over politics in
responding to the pandemic.”

Anthony Fauci will stay on in his role as director of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases but also
serve as Biden’s chief medical adviser on the coronavirus.

Jeff Zients to be coordinator of the Covid-19 response
and counselor to the president. Zients is a former management
consultant and business executive who is serving as Biden
transition co-chair. He served as acting director of the Office of
Management and Budget and National Economic Council director under
Obama but is best known for helping to fix the “Cash for Clunkers”
program and the HealthCare.gov website after its problem-plagued
rollout.

Marcella Nunez-Smith, an associate professor at the Yale
School of Medicine, as Covid-19 Equity Task Force chair, a new job
in which the transition team says she will advise Biden on efforts
to reduce “disparities in response, care, and treatment, including
racial and ethnic disparities.”

“This trusted and accomplished team of leaders will bring the
highest level of integrity, scientific rigor, and crisis-management
experience to one of the toughest challenges America has ever faced
— getting the pandemic under control so that the American people
can get back to work, back to their lives, and back to their loved
ones,” Biden said in a statement.

Biden has not yet named his picks to head the Food and
Drug Administration or the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services.

Numbers of the Day

539,000: A new
report from the Institute for Health Metrics and
Evaluation at the University of Washington projects that, even with
a vaccine being rolled out, the coronavirus death toll — already
over 282,000 — could rise to nearly 540,000 by April, with daily
deaths peaking at 3,000 a day next month. The report says that is
the most likely of six scenarios it modeled.

“If universal mask coverage (95%) were attained in the next
week, our model projects 66,000 fewer cumulative deaths” by April
1, the report says. Vaccines would prevent 9,000 deaths over that
time period.

More than 2,000 Americans have died due to Covid on five
of the first six days this month, with more Americans dying on a
number of those days topping the 2,403 Americans killed in the
attack on Pearl Harbor 79 years ago today.

$5,850: Millions of Americans
who lost their jobs in the coronavirus crisis are running out of
money, reports Heather Long of The Washington Post, and the unpaid
bills are piling up. “Nearly 12 million renters will owe an average
of $5,850 in back rent and utilities by January,” Long
wrote Monday. “Last month 9 million renters said
they were behind on rent … The numbers were especially high for
families with children, with 21 percent falling behind on rent, and
among families of color.”

Quote of the Day “This is not just the worst public health
event

. This is the worst event that this country will face, not just
from a public health side.”

– Deborah Birx, coordinator of the
White House coronavirus task force, on
NBC's “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

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