Will the Election be a Referendum on Health Reform?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And I just wonder what your takeaway was from the dueling — I mean, I don’t even know how to describe it, but the head-to-head television reality show last night in which we see the early numbers giving it to Biden. Do you think that’s because of the issues? Would you think it’s because health care is so important?

ANDY SLAVITT, FORMER ACTING ADMINISTRATOR, CENTERS FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES: Well, you know, given that President Trump is such a T.V. spectacle, it’s a bit of a surprise and I think it may in fact say that these issues are important to people. I think what’s very interesting, Christiane, is that if you look around the world, say in Africa, that the population of about 1.3 billion people, the death toll has been about 35,000, and compare that to the U.S. which is about a quarter of the size that has many, many more deaths, what you take away from that is that this is not a particularly high-tech complex solution uncertain, this is a very — the mask is a very achievable dissolution to nations and continents that have been through many public health crises. So, the fact that President Trump can’t bring himself to even say, you know what, wear a mark, in a very simple form is really troubling because this only works well if there’s unified messaging, and he just continue to equivocate last night even after what he’d been through.

AMANPOUR: So, you’ve raised a really important issue with this comparison of population versus cases, infections and deaths, and I want to come to that in a moment. But first, I want to the ask can you what you have written about and that is that this election, like 2018, you have said yourself will be yet another referendum on access to health, the idea of health care, and I guess you would agree that this issue is now so much more front and center for Americans than it was even in 2018. So, do you believe that this case that’s going to come up before the Supreme Court a few days after the election challenging Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, is really something that’s got the country on a knife edge?

SLAVITT: So, I think there’s two very related issues. The first, I would liken to the 2008 election with Obama versus McCain where the country was really looking to hire somebody to get us out of the global financial crisis, somebody that would demonstrate experience and competence, and I think as we look at the global pandemic, Americans look at two people, each of whom has had a chance to lead through a global pandemic, obviously Trump with COVID-19 and Joe Biden with Ebola. And so, I think in large part they are making a decision based on who can get us out of this the quickest and the best about. And I think very related to that, people know that with millions of people getting COVID, they become pre-existing conditions