 Welcome to Thursday’s Overnight Health Care. We’ll be watching for plenty of back-and-forth on the coronavirus response at tonight’s presidential debate, but first, President Trump gave Democrats some fodder for attacks with his comments on ObamaCare to "60 Minutes," and a new study points to thousands of avoidable COVID-19 deaths in the United States. We’ll start with the ObamaCare comments: Trump says he hopes Supreme Court strikes down ObamaCare President Trump says in a new interview with “60 Minutes” that he would like to see the Supreme Court “end” the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and that he would announce his own health care plan after the case is ruled on. “It is developed. It is fully developed. It is going to be announced very soon when we see what happens with ObamaCare, which is not good,” Trump said when questioned by CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl on why he hasn’t released the health care plan that he has long promised. Trump would not elaborate on how the plan would protect those with preexisting conditions. He claimed that “pieces” of his plan had been released before, saying later that it “will” be developed and suggesting that despite his assurances it has not been fully formed. “I hope that they end it. It will be so good if they end it because we will come up with a plan,” Trump said. The lawsuit: Trump's own Justice Department signed on to the lawsuit seeking to strike the ACA, which was brought by a group of GOP state attorneys general, so it's not exactly a surprise that he wants the law gone. But the landmark health care reform law has proved popular with voters. Contrast with Senate GOP: In Congress, on the other hand, Republicans are downplaying the chances of the ObamaCare lawsuit, which has become a political headache. “No one believes the Supreme Court is going to strike down the Affordable Care Act,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last week during a debate with his Democratic challenger. Read more here.
 
FDA grants full approval to remdesivir as COVID-19 treatment The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted full approval to the antiviral drug remdesivir to treat COVID-19, manufacturer Gilead announced Thursday. FDA initially granted emergency use authorization for remdesivir in May, which allowed doctors and hospitals to use the drug to treat hospitalized patients without a full approval. Remdesivir, which is administered in a hospital setting through an IV, showed modest results in reducing the hospitalizations of patients with severe cases of COVID-19. It is now the only FDA-approved treatment for COVID-19. The approval is based on three randomized controlled trials, including one sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. In an open letter to the public, Gilead's chief medical officer Merdad Parsey acknowledged the results from a global World Health Organization trial, which found remsdesivir had no substantial impact on the survival of COVID-19 patients or the length of their hospital stays. But he took issue with the trial design and its implementation, and said the ones conducted in the U.S. result in high quality scientific evidence. Read more here. House Democrats threaten to subpoena HHS over allegations of political interference at CDC House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), chairman of the Oversight and Reform Select subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, threatened Thursday to issue subpoenas in the panel's investigation of alleged political interference by the Trump administration in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports on the COVID-19 pandemic. In a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar, Clyburn warned that the department's lack of responsiveness to the requests for documents and interviews made by the panel more than a month ago meant that Democrats may turn to issuing subpoenas to HHS for the first time since the subcommittee was established this spring. "This investigation is urgent because pervasive political interference at HHS appears to be contributing to the Trump administration’s ongoing failure to control the coronavirus, which is killing hundreds of Americans each day," Clyburn wrote in the letter obtained by The Hill. "If you refuse to comply voluntarily, you will force the Select Subcommittee to consider issuing subpoenas." An HHS spokesperson didn't immediately have a response to Clyburn's letter. Read more here. On The Trail: A third coronavirus wave builds just before Election Day A new wave of viral infections is washing over the nation just weeks before Election Day, putting a new spotlight on a crisis that has come to define President Trump’s struggle for reelection. For months, public health experts have warned of an increase in the number of cases that would accompany lower temperatures in the fall and winter. As people move inside more, they said, the coronavirus was likely to spread. Those predictions have come true — earlier and more significantly than expected. “We’re in a really precarious time,” said David Rubin, a pediatrician who runs the PolicyLab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, whose models show devolving situations across much of the nation. The pandemic “is accelerating, and it’s accelerating quickly. We’re now seeing hospitals exceeding capacity in the Upper Midwest, in Salt Lake, where hospitals are filling up, and it’s just mid-October.” What does this mean for the election?: The spike in cases comes at a disastrous time for Trump’s reelection campaign. Trump has tried to change the focus of the contest to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine and China, to sometimes violent protests in Democratic-controlled cities, and to an economic comeback he says has already begun. But voters give Trump disastrous marks on handling a pandemic that has already killed more Americans than the populations of Tacoma, Wash., or Baton Rouge, La. Read more here. | 
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