March 17, 2020 at 6:58 a.m. EDT
The Department of Veterans Affairs serves as a backup health system in times of crisis, but its mission statement for this crucial role was deleted from the agency’s website Friday as many in the country grew concerned that the coronavirus could overload civilian hospitals.

VA’s three missions are to serve veterans through care, research and training in its behemoth health system. But in 1982, Congress expanded VA’s role into what has become known as VA’s “fourth mission”: to absorb non-veteran civilian or military patients in the event that hospitals overflow in an emergency, such as a pandemic like the coronavirus.

That objective was described on VA’s Office of Emergency Management page going back to 2014, according to cached pages, and was on VA’s site as late as Friday afternoon. But later that day, references to the “fourth mission” were removed and replaced with information that doesn’t reference the mission at all.

“It’s Orwellian,” Kristofer Goldsmith, the associate director of policy and government affairs at Vietnam Veterans of America, said Monday.

“Major veterans service organizations have pressed so VA is not underfunded. This is a national security issue,” he told The Washington Post. “It’s really frightening to see the administration apparently trying to purge that from America’s memory.”

VA has deployed medical resources to help veterans and civilians alike in the wake of hurricanes, floods and tornadoes. It even sent mental health clinicians to Orlando after the Pulse nightclub massacre in 2016. And it has many resources in short supply at some hospitals, like negative pressure rooms used to contain outbreak patients, the New York Times reported.

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Politico reports that in 2016, the Obama administration created a 69-page National Security Council playbook that included hundreds of tactics and policy decisions to “prevent, slow, or mitigate the spread of an emerging infectious disease threat.” So simple one would think even Donald Trump could follow it, the guide asks questions like “Is there sufficient personal protective equipment for health care workers who are providing medical care? If YES: What are the triggers to signal exhaustion of supplies? Are additional supplies available? If NO: Should the Strategic National Stockpile release PPE to states?”

In addition to practical matters related to things like sufficient personal protective equipment—a dearth of which is a gigantic problem as health professionals try to deal with the surging coronavirus—the guide urges the government to present a “unified message” in order to effectively address the public’s concerns. “Early coordination of risk communications through a single federal spokesperson is critical,” the playbook advises. Viewed as a corrective to initial stumbling by global leaders on the 2014–2015 Ebola crisis, the formally named “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents,” aka “the pandemic playbook,” was created to ensure responses to subsequent pandemics would be better handled.

Seven days before Donald Trump took office, his aides faced a major test: the rapid, global spread of a dangerous virus in cities like London and Seoul, one serious enough that some countries were imposing travel bans.

In a sober briefing, Trump’s incoming team learned that the disease was an emerging pandemic — a strain of novel influenza known as H9N2 — and that health systems were crashing in Asia, overwhelmed by the demand.

“Health officials warn that this could become the worst influenza pandemic since 1918,” Trump’s aides were told. Soon, they heard cases were popping up in California and Texas.

The briefing was intended to hammer home a new, terrifying reality facing the Trump administration, and the incoming president’s responsibility to protect Americans amid a crisis. But unlike the coronavirus pandemic currently ravaging the globe, this 2017 crisis didn’t really happen — it was among a handful of scenarios presented to Trump’s top aides as part of a legally required transition exercise with members of the outgoing administration of Barack Obama.

[snip]

Obama aides, in op-eds and essays ripping the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus, officially called COVID-19, have pointed to the Jan. 13, 2017, session as a key example of their effort to press the importance of pandemic preparedness to their successors.

[snip]

None of the sources argued that one meeting three years ago could have dramatically altered events today. But Obama aides say the Trump administration’s fumbling of the coronavirus outbreak is partly rooted in how unprepared — and in some cases unwilling — it was to engage in transition exercises at all in late 2016 and early 2017.

You can enroll in or change plans if you have certain life changes, or qualify for Medicaid or CHIP.

A time outside the yearly Open Enrollment Period when you can sign up for health insurance. You qualify for a Special Enrollment Period if you’ve had certain life events, including losing health coverage, moving, getting married, having a baby, or adopting a child.

Depending on your Special Enrollment Period type, you may have 60 days before or 60 days following the event to enroll in a plan. If you miss your Special Enrollment Period window, you may have to wait until the next Open Enrollment Period to apply.

The payment — which the IRS is calling an "economic impact payment," the government has named a "recovery rebate," and many people are calling a "stimulus check" — is technically an advance tax credit meant to offset your 2020 federal income taxes.

Is the money from the check taxable?
No, the money is not taxable.

What is a tax credit?
A tax credit is an amount of money awarded to you, the taxpayer, by the IRS that reduces your tax bill on a dollar-for-dollar basis. It is one of the last steps in calculating your annual tax bill and can be claimed regardless of whether you itemize your deductions.

“That’s the problem with the for-profit health care system,” Hlumyk said, citing the tendency of hospitals to compete for resources instead of share them.

The Cares Act, the $2 trillion stimulus package signed into law on Friday, is a massive shot in the arm for a moribund economy, with payments and loan guarantees to workers, small businesses, and industries hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. The U.S. Postal Service is included in the act too—it allows USPS to borrow up to $10 billion from the Treasury.

The government wants to ensure mail and packages keep flowing during this unprecedented period of economic pause. It’s a necessary step given that logistics providers are the lifeblood of any economy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is seeking more funding for the U.S. Postal Service as lawmakers work on a new round of aid amid the coronavirus pandemic, and Democrats warn the independent agency is in crisis.

The stimulus package signed by President Donald Trump on Friday allows the postal service to borrow up to $10 billion from the U.S. Treasury. On Tuesday, Pelosi, a California Democrat, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” she wants more funding so the USPS could put in place a wider-ranging vote-by-mail system and deliver equipment to those fighting the outbreak.