Democrats Plot Biggest Health Care Expansion Since Obamacare

By Yuval Rosenberg

Twelve American service members and dozens
of Afghan civilians were killed Thursday in attacks by two suicide
bombers outside the Kabul airport, officials said. At least 15 U.S.
service members were injured. The attacks by ISIS-K, the Afghan
affiliate of the Islamic State terrorist group, came after
officials had warned of a threat at the airport. The U.S. military
deaths were reportedly the first in Afghanistan since February 2020
and marked one of the highest single-day tolls in the two decades
of war there. “We’re outraged as well as heartbroken,” President
Biden said, vowing to hunt down those responsible. Read more at

CNN,
The New York Times or
The Washington Post.

Here’s what else is going on:

Democrats Face Brutal Timeline to Pass Biden Agenda

Democratic lawmakers have an enormous amount of work to do to
pass two major spending bills that contain the bulk of President
Joe Biden’s economic agenda, and just a few weeks to get it
done.

In order to advance that agenda, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
(D-CA) appeased a small but crucial group of centrists by agreeing
to hold a vote on the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill by
September 27. But a larger and equally crucial group of
progressives within the Democratic caucus want to vote on the $3.5
trillion “human infrastructure” plan before then, creating a race
to finish the larger piece of legislation before the deadline.

“The coming weeks will be intense,” Pelosi said in a letter to
Democrats Wednesday.

In an interview with Punchbowl News, Rep. Pramila Jayapal
(D-WA), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus,
explained why her group wants to vote first on the larger bill.
“[T]he reality is, the totality of the Biden agenda, the Democratic
agenda that we ran on and we now have to deliver on, is really
contained within the reconciliation bill,” she said. “So let’s pass
that first, and then we’ll make sure we send both bills to the
president’s desk to sign.”

Preparing for the race: The $3.5 trillion spending
framework passed by the Senate two weeks ago is basically an
outline with topline dollar figures that needs to be filled in with
policy details. Pelosi has set an ambitious but non-binding
deadline of September 15 for finishing that process, with the House
committees that create those details reportedly looking to start
their markups next week. All committees will look to report their
pieces of the package to the House Budget Committee by mid-month,
theoretically leaving enough time for the legislation to be turned
into a final package and receive a vote on the House floor before
the end of the month.

Battle over spending: A central question in the markup
process will be the spending total. The Senate authorization allows
for up to $3.5 trillion in the final bill, but it could be less —
and there is already pressure from more conservative Democrats to
reduce the total.

Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (KY) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) have
repeatedly expressed their opposition to the size of the $3.5
trillion bill, and party leaders will need to figure out a way to
get them on board given their 50 seats in the Senate. But they’re
not the only ones who want to see a smaller bill.

“Kyrsten and Joe get the most attention, but they’re not alone
in wanting that number to be lower,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT)

told Politico. “My hope is that we're not making
decisions based on an arbitrary number. That we're looking at the
programs we need to fund and the programs that we don't need to
fund.”

The battle could be intense, though, with progressives pushing
to maintain the $3.5 trillion total.

“I already negotiated. The truth is we need more,” Sen.
Bernie Sanders told Politico. “The needs are there. This is, in my
view, the minimum of what we should be spending,” Sanders, who had
called for $6 trillion in spending, added.

Quote of the Day

“I think Democrats have a lot of momentum after this week’s
vote. I don’t think anyone dreamed that the speaker would be able
to, in effect, bully every member of her conference into giving a
green light to these tax increases. But she did.”

— Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), the ranking member of the House
Ways and Means Committee, in an interview with
CNBC. Brady said he thinks the odds “could be
good” for Democrats to pass their spending bills despite the
severely compressed timeline.

Democrats Plot Biggest Health Care Expansion Since
Obamacare

As Democrats get down to negotiating and writing their budget
reconciliation bill, The Washington Post’s Rachel Roubein
notes that the legislation is poised to be
the biggest health expansion since Obamacare.

Roubein breaks down what’s likely to be included in that
expansion — and adds that one major progressive policy change
likely won’t make the cut. Here’s an overview.

Expanding Medicare coverage to include dental, vision and
hearing: This “seems a foregone conclusion,” Roubein
says, but adding those benefits will likely take years. “In
the meantime, a Senate Democratic aide said the chamber is crafting
a stopgap policy to help seniors afford these services right
away.”

Expanding Medicaid in states that haven’t done so under
Obamacare: Democrats are working on a plan to extend Medicaid
coverage to 2.2 million more adults via a federal plan for states
that have resisted expanding the health care program for low income
people under the Affordable Care Act. Under a leading option,
Roubein reports, “people would get free coverage on Obamacare’s
marketplaces for several years, giving time for federal officials
to create a new Medicaid-like program providing more robust
benefits.”

Plans to lower prescription drug prices: Democrats
have pushed to allow the federal government to negotiate prices
with drugmakers, but there are likely to be some differences
between a plan passed by the House in 2019 and legislation being
developed by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden
(D-OR).

“The House bill tied Medicare drug negotiations to prices for
selected drugs overseas — a plan that has faced pushback from
moderates,” Roubein writes. “Instead, Wyden is eyeing a new route:
tying price negotiations to a domestic benchmark, according to
three lobbyists familiar with the discussions.” The details of
these and other drug-pricing measures are going to be the subject
of “pretty fierce negotiations,” one health policy lobbyist tells
the Post.

No reduction in Medicare eligibility age: President
Biden and other key Democrats have endorsed the idea of lowering
the Medicare eligibility age to 60, but the proposal isn’t likely
to make the cut.


Read the full piece at The Washington Post.

Number of the Day: 100,000

The U.S. will see nearly 100,000 more deaths from Covid-19 by
December 1 if current conditions persist, according to an estimate
from a leading forecasting model. Deaths are projected to peak in
September at 1,400 per day before gradually decreasing during the
fall. If accurate, it would bring the official number of deaths
from the disease in the U.S. to 730,000.

Forecasters noted that the number could be reduced
significantly if Americans were to change their behavior by getting
vaccinated in greater numbers, limiting social gatherings and
wearing masks. “We can save 50,000 lives simply by wearing masks,”
forecaster Ali Mokdad of the University of Washington
told the Associated Press. “That’s how important
behaviors are.”

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