The Health 202: Three Problems for Republicans in Health

The prognosis

Republicans face a triple penchant for health care during the mid-term campaign.

Here's how:

1. They failed to achieve two coveted goals of abolishing Obamacare and reducing their rights expenditures, although they controlled both the White House and Congress for two years .

2. This did not stop the democrats from demolishing them on this unfinished list of tasks of the GOP and eventually regaining control of the House.

3. While Republicans are trying to get away from the issue, polls show health care tops the list of voters' concerns as election day approaches – Democrats have an advantage over has more confidence in political parties to tackle the problem.

As we have written extensively in The Health 202, Democrats have spent the entire election cycle under the accusation that Republicans want to remove the protections afforded to Americans who were already in office. This week, they grabbed additional stories: Republicans will aim to drastically reduce Medicare and Social Security when they retain the majority of double-duty programs on which older people s & # 39; 39, strongly support.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) Also said that Republicans, if they are still in control in January, will again attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare.

The Senate leader opened the door to attacks on property rights by informing Bloomberg News that the deficit was huge, pointing out that the growing cost of such important programs as Medicare and Social Security was to blame, despite the estimated price to 2 trillion dollars of the general revision of the tax reduction GOP over 10 years. But McConnell also admitted that even if the Republicans remained in command, he would need the Democrats to make a real review of spending. The move would be politically risky and the leader would probably also need Democratic votes.

"We all know that there will be no solution to this problem unless there is some kind of big bipartite negotiation that allows the very popular programs to benefit from rights to be upheld." ", he told Reuters.

McConnell is clearly trying to refocus the debate on spending, which could be costly (pun intended) for Republicans who have designed themselves as guardians of budget cuts over the past decade. Under the control of the US GOP Congress, deficit spending has exploded. The Treasury Department announced Monday to have reached its highest level in six years. And Trump has no desire to reduce the deficit, telling the Associated Press that "I do not touch social security."

Predictably, the Democrats jumped on McConnell's comments on rights:

Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.):

Representative Tim Walz (D-Min.):

Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.):

Senator Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.):

Lanhee Chen, a strategist at GOP, told me that he thought the party had stopped discussing spending because of President Trump, who was not worried about deficits, which was in stark contrast to Focus of the Tea Party in recent years.

"The president has not made it a priority," he said. "This is the kind of thing that requires presidential leadership, and the concept of deficit reduction is nowhere in the president's vocabulary."

McConnell seems to agree with this analysis. Lisa Desjardins, PBS Newshour correspondent:

Even though Republicans have not managed to eliminate ACA, they have certainly tried – and they pay the price. This highly publicized effort opened the door to a steady stream of Democrat accusations that they were trying to suppress pre-existing health coverage and protections offered by vulnerable Americans.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of essential health care for voters in this year's elections.. This is the number one voter, according to polls released this morning by the Kaiser Family Foundation, even surpassing the economy as a determining factor for which people will vote. This contrasts with all other elections since the adoption of the ACA in 2010, when health care was the focus of concern but voters were certainly not worried.

While there is a clear partisan split on the issue – with many more Democratic voters than Republicans putting health care at the top of their list – it is remarkable that independent voters have said that health care is their top priority. main problem. In combat zones, 28% of voters identified it as the main concern.

To be clear, voters do not claim to protect the ACA, although the historic bill protects many of the things that they seem to embrace. A much larger number of respondents said they were most concerned about the cost and access to health care – concerns that Democrats are trying to address in protecting pre-existing conditions.

It is difficult to understand how much health policy has changed in the last two years.. Now, it is the Democrats who are constantly referring to the subject in advertisements and on the election campaign, after four Republican elections calling on them to repeal Obamacare.

At least we will soon know if the strategy of the democrats has worked well.

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AHH, OOF and OUCH

AHH: In his interview with Reuters, McConnell also suggested to Republicans to still try to repeal and replace the ACA after mid-term.

He described the Republicans' unsuccessful attempt to repeal the health care law as "the only deception of this Congress from the point of view of the Republicans".

"If we had the votes to start all over again, we would do it. But that depends on what will happen in a few weeks, "he said. "We are not happy with the way Obamacare works."

"However, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act remains popular with the Republican base, and McConnell's remarks could be aimed at training key constituents ahead of next month's elections," writes our Post colleague, Felicia Sonmez.

And the Democrats, of course, have grasped the comments of the leader of the majority. The Democratic National Committee, the Senate branch of the Democratic Party, House Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) And Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (DN.Y.) have all public statements calling McConnell's remarks to indicate the program of the Republicans they win in November.

"Americans should not be deceived: if the Republicans keep the Senate, they will do everything in their power to take health care away from families and increase their costs," he said. act to eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions, to repeal the health care law or cut Medicare and Medicaid, "Schumer said in a statement. "Americans should take Senator McConnell at his word."

OOF: The number of migrant families entering the United States hit a new record last month. The number of migrant parents entering the country with children has reached a record three months since the Trump government ended its controversial family separations on the US border with Mexico.

In September, US Border Patrol agents arrested 16,658 family members, an 80 percent increase since July when the administration ended its policy of separating families at the border.

And the record increases come at a politically problematic time for the president, who "campaigned for the promise to end illegal immigration and build a border wall," reported Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey of The Post. .

'Aid, including [senior policy adviser Stephen Miller] The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has repeatedly told the president that many children crossing the border smuggled illegally and that the United States was being taken advantage of ", writes he." once again for the reestablishment of a policy of separation from the family which, in his opinion, is the only thing that has worked, despite the controversy it has aroused. "

"The number of" unaccompanied foreign children "and single adults apprehended remained virtually unchanged last month, indicating that more and more migrants who could have traveled alone in the past are now taking children with them," they add .

OUCH: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 92 people in 29 states have been infected with a drug-resistant strain of salmonella as a result of raw chicken products.

No deaths have been reported so far, and the CDC said 21 people were hospitalized yesterday, said Jen Christensen of CNN. The particular salmonella strain is resistant to several antibiotics.

"The lab tests do not determine the source of the raw chicken and no common supplier has been identified," Jen says. "The strain was found in samples of various raw chicken products, including pet foods, chicken pieces, chopped pieces of meat and whole chickens. The bacterium has also been found in live chickens. "

The CDC is investigating the outbreak, which is also being monitored by the Food Inspection and Safety Service of the US Department of Agriculture.

MEDICAL MISSIVES

– The World Health Organization has decided not to declare the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo public health emergency of international concern.

"We are optimistic that this outbreak, like that of May, will be under control within a reasonable period of time," said Robert Steffen, chairman of the Emergency Committee of the WHO International Health Regulations. reports Debra Goldschmidt and Susan Scutti from CNN.

"If an emergency had been declared, it could have had a negative impact on travel and trade, which could have hurt the efforts of the intervention team," they write.

Since the beginning of the last outbreak in August, there have been 216 cases of Ebola, including 139 deaths and 57 people who have recovered from the disease, they write.

AGENCY ALERT

– The CDC and the Alzheimer's Association are launching a guide for the next five years, outlining strategies for dealing with Alzheimer's disease as a public health crisis. According to a CDC behavioral risk factor surveillance system, 11% of adults aged 45 and over have experienced a cognitive decline in the past year, according to a press release, but more than half do not know what to expect. do not discuss it with a health care provider. The CDC and Alzheimer Association executive appeals to the public health community to help reduce risk and to develop early detection and early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, among other strategies .

RX INDUSTRY

– The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer plans to reduce its global workforce by 2% by the beginning of next year.

The company, which employs about 90,000 people worldwide, will cut staff through retirements and layoffs by then, reports Reuters. Spokeswoman Sally Beatty told Reuters the move was "to create a simple, more efficient structure and not to realize cost savings".

"This decision follows the announcement earlier this month that the chief operating officer, Albert Bourla, would succeed Ian Read as chief executive in January," adds Reuters.

OPTICAL OPTICS

– Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein extolled the administration's comments on the fight against the opioid epidemic in a speech delivered prior to the National Diabetes Conference. United States Health Insurance (AHIP).

He said Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions "understood the extent of opioid addiction in America, it was stunning." He described in detail some of the enforcement actions taken by the Department of Justice, including the indictment of more than 200 doctors and more than 200 other health professionals. opioid related crimes.

Rosenstein also said that Trump "s set the ambitious and ambitious goal of reducing opioid prescribing rates by a third in three years. This will have a major impact. "We have recently announced an average 10% reduction in opioid production for next year," he said. "This will bring us to a decrease of about 44 percent. % of opioid production since 2016. "

HEALTH ON THE HILL

– Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Defends her decision to release a DNA test revealing that she had distant relatives of Native Americans.

"Donald Trump appears in front of the crowd several times a week to attack me," Warren told the Boston Globe Editorial Board on Tuesday. "How do you sit here if you know what it is, and what people are asking for, and you are not giving an answer?"

Our colleague from the Post, Avi Selk, reports that his defense came as "the reproach against Warren has also escalated in a few hours, led at first by prominent Americans, who accused her of wanting to". 39 to appropriate Aboriginal ancestry for political reasons ". how "pretty much everything" that we read about Warren's DNA test is wrong.

– And here are some good reads from The Post and beyond:

Temperature of the trunk

STATUS SCAN

CURRENT HAND

Today & # 39; hui

• The FDA is organizing a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Gastrointestinal Medications.
• Politico is organizing an event on "Using Technology and Innovation to Combat Opioid Abuse and Diabetes".
• Brookings Institution has an interview with the administrator of the Seema Verma Content Management System.

SUGAR RUSH

Just about everything you've read about Warren's DNA test is fake

Montgomery County has one of the lowest voting rates in Tennessee. La Poste asked residents why they did not plan to vote in the midterm elections: