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Biden Considers Executive Orders And Funding To Support Abortion Rights

Biden Considers Executive Orders And Funding To Support Abortion Rights

By Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden is considering executive orders and other measures to increase access and funding for women if the U.S. Supreme Court votes to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, officials and sources with knowledge of the matter said.

An unprecedented leak of an initial draft majority opinion from the Supreme Court, published by Politico last week, showed the court is set to overturn the Roe decision that said the Constitution protects a woman's right to choose to have an abortion.

The president has asked the White House Gender Policy Council, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the White House Counsel's Office to put together a plan to protect women's rights, press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday.

A source advising the White House on how it can address the issue told Reuters many steps being considered are tied to asking federal agencies to do more.

For example, the White House is considering pushing the Food & Drug Administration, which controls prescription drug access, to increase access to the drugs used in medical abortions, the person said. Medical abortions account for about half of overall abortions in the United States and must be dispensed by physician in many states.

The White House is also discussing making abortion pills available online from interstate and foreign providers for personal use and asking the FDA to publish a list of authorized reputable providers, the source said.

A third option is asking Health & Human Services Administration (HHS) and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to allow Medicaid funds to be used to pay for travel expenses for lower-income women who travel out of state for abortion procedures, the source said.

The discussions involve preparing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to defend doctors, pharmacists, institutions that perform abortions and dispense abortion medication, along with women who choose to get an abortion, from criminal cases and lawsuits.

"It may not all be executive orders ... a lot of this is ensuring that we have increased access and funding so that women who are living in the states, if Roe were to be overturned, would be able to have expanded access and capabilities and some of that could be from the Department of Justice," Psaki said, without offering details.

The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and the Surgeon General's Office could also be tapped to put out a report on the "profound physical, mental, and emotional impact on women from not having access to reproductive health services," the source said.

Earlier Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters President Biden was meeting a group of people to discuss executive actions. "If he can find executive actions that work and are legal, I would certainly welcome them," Schumer said.

Psaki said she was not aware of a Tuesday meeting but these issues had been discussed in meetings with the president over several days.

She said the White House will not disclose specific steps until the Supreme Court issues a final opinion.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington, additional reporting by Jeff Mason, editing by Robert Birsel)

Biden Orders Insurance Companies To Cover Eight Monthly COVID Tests

Biden Orders Insurance Companies To Cover Eight Monthly COVID Tests

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Insurance companies will be required to cover eight over-the-counter at-home coronavirus tests per person each month starting Saturday, the Biden administration said, expanding access to highly sought-after kits as Americans grapple with a surge in coronavirus cases.

The White House also said on Monday that there is no limit to the number of COVID-19 tests, including at-home tests, that insurers must cover if they are ordered or administered by a health care provider.

The measures are part of a bid by President Joe Biden to make testing more widely available to Americans facing soaring coronavirus cases due to the highly infectious Omicron variant.

In a speech in December, Biden outlined plans to distribute 500 million at-home coronavirus test kits and stand up new federal testing sites, adding to the 20,000 already in existence. However, experts decried the announcement as "too little too late" amid testing shortages nationwide.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday that Americans should be able to order the tests online later this month, noting that all contracts for rapid tests should be awarded over the next two weeks. The first was signed last week.

Under the insurer coverage plan announced Monday, the administration said that insurers are still required to reimburse tests purchased by consumers outside of their network, at a rate of up to $12 per individual test.

It was not immediately clear what incentives were offered to insurers to agree to the plan. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Eric Beech and Alexandra Alper; Editing by Chris Reese and Cynthia Osterman)

New Documents Highlight Trump's Deadly Pandemic Deceptions

New Documents Highlight Trump's Deadly Pandemic Deceptions

While public attention remains raptly focused on the House committee probing former President Donald Trump's attempted coup and the Capitol insurrection, another investigation is compiling proof of his catastrophic failure to prevent hundreds of thousands of American deaths in the coronavirus pandemic.

New documents released this week by the House Select Coronavirus Subcommittee show that the Trump White House distorted and concealed vital information about the virus for purely partisan purposes — and that those political decisions caused avoidable suffering and mortality on a massive scale.

According to the documents released by congressional investigators — and reported byThe Hill on Nov. 12 — Trump officials repeatedly interfered with efforts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide guidance to the public about the pandemic. Later those political aides sought to hide or destroy the evidence of their interference to block CDC messages about the disease.

The motive behind their obstruction of CDC's career scientists was to put Trump's political self-interest above public health. True information about the likely spread and impact of the pandemic conflicted with Trump's relentlessly and falsely optimistic claims about the threat it posed.

An early example occurred on February 25, 2020, when Nancy Messonier, then director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, held a press briefing on the impending peril of the pandemic. Messonier calmly and correctly informed reporters that by then the spread of the novel coronavirus was no longer avoidable, which meant that immediate public health measures would need to be implemented.

By informing the public of the reality of a public health emergency about to erupt, Messonier infuriated Trump. Two days later, the president embarked on his campaign to downplay the pandemic, bury accurate scientific information, and spread his "rosy scenario" of lethal nonsense. His remarks, replete with lies, still reverberate:

"It's going to disappear," Trump said at a Black History Month event. "One day — it's like a miracle — it will disappear. And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We'll see what happens. Nobody really knows. The fact is, the greatest experts — I've spoken to them all. Nobody really knows."

None of that was true and, as he later admitted, he knew it then. Moreover, the experts in his own administration knew it and had informed him that this virulent illness would not just "disappear." But he didn't want to hear it and he didn't want anyone else to hear it either. The White House ordered the CDC to stop any public briefings until June 2020, leaving Americans confused and uninformed during the pandemic's confusing early months.

Following Messonier's press briefing, the White House seized direct control of all public communication regarding the pandemic. Trump aides refused many requests from CDC to resume briefings, replacing them instead with the infamous White House coronavirus task force TV show starring Donald Trump. Anne Schuchat, then a CDC deputy director, told the House subcommittee that she stopped watching the White House briefings because they delivered "unhelpful" conflicting messages.

Around that time, Trump political appointees in the Department of Health and Human Services were enforcing his falsely cheery propaganda campaign. They didn't want US scientific agencies releasing "negative information" that conflicted with Trump's optimistic claims, and specifically insisted on altering the CDC's weekly morbidity and mortality reports. An email showing that HHS political appointee Paul Alexander had demanded that CDC halt publication of scientific facts, because they might hurt Trump's reelection campaign, was intentionally deleted to conceal the interference.

None of that was true and, as he later admitted, he knew it. Moreover, the experts in his own administration knew it and had informed him that this virulent illness would not just "disappear." But he didn't want to hear it and he didn't want anyone else to hear it either. The White House ordered the CDC to stop any public briefings until June 2020, leaving Americans confused and uninformed during the pandemic's confusing early months.

Following Messonier's press briefing, the White House seized direct control of all public communication regarding the pandemic. Trump aides refused many requests from CDC to resume briefings, replacing them instead with the infamous White House coronavirus task force TV show starring Donald Trump. Anne Schuchat, then a CDC deputy director, told the House subcommittee that she stopped watching the White House briefings because they delivered "unhelpful" conflicting messages.

Around that time, Trump political appointees in the Department of Health and Human Services were enforcing his falsely cheery propaganda campaign. They didn't want US scientific agencies releasing "negative information" that conflicted with Trump's optimistic claims, and specifically insisted on altering the CDC's weekly morbidity and mortality reports. An email showing that HHS political appointee Paul Alexander had demanded that CDC halt publication of scientific facts, because they might hurt Trump's reelection campaign, was intentionally deleted to conceal the interference.

How many lives were lost by this ruthless sanitizing of the pandemic truth? Deborah Birx, the former Trump health adviser who became familiar from her appearances on the White House task force, told the House subcommittee last month behind closed doors that she estimates the cost of Trump's oblivious inaction at 130,000 excess deaths.

"I believe if we had fully implemented the mask mandates, the reduction in indoor dining, the getting friends and family to understand the risk of gathering in private homes, and we had increased testing, that we probably could have decreased fatalities into the 30 percent less to 40 percent less range," Birx said in excerpts of her testimony released by the subcommittee (chaired by the dauntless Rep. James Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina).

No person who can accept the truth doubts the culpability of Trump in hundreds of thousands of American deaths, or the responsibility of his malignant gang and his media echo chamber in the pandemic disaster of 2020. Their lies are still broadcast from the all-vaccinated studio of Fox News and other right-wing outlets. But the final report of the House subcommittee promises more revelations — and at last a detailed accounting of the deadly legacy of Trump and his accomplices.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

'Shameless Stunt': Trump Demands Drug-Discount Cards To Spur Failing Senior Support

'Shameless Stunt': Trump Demands Drug-Discount Cards To Spur Failing Senior Support

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

If President Donald Trump loses to former Vice President Joe Biden in this year's presidential election, two of the main reasons are likely to be his response to his COVID-19 pandemic and his health care policy — specifically, Trump's push to eliminate the Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with preexisting conditions. One desperate move that Trump is making in the hope of saving his campaign is promising senior citizens drug discount cards, and Politico's Dan Diamond reports that Trump wants them to be available before November 3.

Diamond reports:

Caught by surprise by President Donald Trump's promise to deliver drug-discount cards to seniors, health officials are scrambling to get the nearly $8 billion plan done by Election Day, according to five officials and draft documents obtained by Politico. The taxpayer-funded plan, which was only announced two weeks ago and is being justified inside the White House and the Health Department as a test of the Medicare program, is being driven by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, the officials said.

The $200 cards, Diamond notes, "would resemble credit cards" and "would need to be used at pharmacies" — and they "would be paid for by tapping Medicare's trust fund."

Politico obtained a copy of a draft proposal for the plan that has been circulated in the White House, and according to the proposal, "The goal is to begin the test by distributing cards starting in October 2020."

Trump's idea for drug discount cards for seniors comes at a time when many polls are showing his support among seniors falling. And Rep. Frank Pallone, the Democrat who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, isn't the least bit impressed by the proposal. Pallone told Politico, "It's a shameless stunt that steals billions from Medicare in order to fund a legally dubious scheme that's clearly intended to benefit President Trump's campaign right before Election Day."

An official for the Department of Health and Human Services, quoted anonymously, told Politico, "It's turning into this last-minute, thrown-together thing." And another HHS official interviewed by Politico said, "This is a solution in search of a problem and a bald play for votes in the form of money in pockets."

Twitter has had plenty of reactions to Diamond's article and Trump's drug card proposal. Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the Program on Medicare Policy, tweeted, "A lot of people with Medicare might appreciate receiving a $200 drug discount card, but this doesn't do anything to address the persistent problem of rising drug prices. And for those taking expensive drugs who struggle to pay their monthly copays, $200 won't go very far."

Twitter user @ColorFiend wrote, "Trump is bribing seniors to vote for him, while Therese Walsh (editorial director of Writer Unboxed), posted, "Too bad he kneecapped usps, huh?" — a reference to problems in the United States Postal Service that have occurred under Trump's postmaster general, Louis DeJoy. And another Twitter user, Gordon G. Forbes, wrote, "Any voter that can be bought for $200 is a cheap date, or an easy mark. But Trump knows his base."Stacie Dusetzina, a professor at Vanderbilt University who has studied Medicare's drug program, went over the draft proposal — and Dusetzina told Politico, "There are a lot of things that seem problematic. It's an incredibly large amount of money to be spending, (and) it's not really solving any systemic problem."