FLORIDA GOV’s SCHOOL MASK CRUSADE FALTERS — Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ vocal campaign against school mask requirements is crumbling, as the state’s Covid-19 caseload rises and more districts opt to defy his orders. Three weeks after DeSantis vowed that “we don’t have mandates and we won’t,” more than 1 million Florida students now live in school districts where masks are required, POLITICO’s Matt Dixon and Andrew Atterbury report. That’s equal to more than a third of the entire state’s enrollment, after Palm Beach County instituted a comprehensive mask mandate. The county — which is the state’s fifth largest — joined other high-population districts like Miami-Dade, Broward and Hillsborough in shrugging off DeSantis’ threats. The million-student milestone further undermines DeSantis’ attempt to position himself as a leading adversary of the Biden administration ahead of a potential 2024 presidential run. President Joe Biden has already committed to covering any funding cuts DeSantis imposes on local officials taking public-health precautions, and on Wednesday warned of legal action against states that try to ban mask mandates. In the meantime, Florida’s cases are skyrocketing. In Hillsborough County alone, more than 10,000 students are quarantined or isolated due to Covid-19. New cases for the state overall have shot up to more than 20,000 a day. And late Thursday, DeSantis was dealt another blow — this time from the courts. A Florida judge rejected an attempt to throw out a lawsuit challenging his ban on school mask mandates, allowing the case to go forward. Parents from counties across Florida had filed the lawsuit over claims that blocking local mask policies puts children’s safety at risk. COVID RETURNS TO THE SENATE — Three senators have tested positive for Covid-19, according to separate announcements made within hours of each other on Thursday. Sens. Roger Wicker, Angus King and John Hickenlooper were all vaccinated, making these the latest breakthrough cases on the Hill, POLITICO’s Maeve Sheehy writes. Sen. Lindsey Graham said earlier this month he’d been infected. King and Hickenlooper both said they’re suffering mild symptoms. And with the Senate out until next month, their quarantining won’t affect the chamber’s business. But the senators seized on the news to push people to get vaccinated. “While I am not feeling great, I’m definitely feeling much better than I would have without the vaccine,” King said. Indeed, the cases are in one way reinforcement of the vaccines’ promise: That even for older Americans (all three are over 65) most at risk of getting hit hard by the virus, the shots help fight off severe disease that could lead to hospitalization or death. They’re also a reminder of the perils of letting Covid-19 continue to circulate. The more virus that’s present, the greater odds that even the vaccinated will get infected and potentially pass it on to others — especially when it comes to lawmakers whose jobs involve constant travel. KAISER: PATIENTS BACK ON THE HOOK FOR COVID TREATMENT COSTS — The vast majority of health insurance plans have stopped waiving out-of-pocket costs for Covid-19 treatments — meaning people hospitalized with the disease could once again be responsible for big bills tied to their illness. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 72 percent of the nation’s largest health plans dropped pandemic-era cost-sharing waivers in August, with another 10 percent phasing out their waiver policies by the end of October. That’s a significant shift from earlier in the public health crisis, when most privately insured Americans would have had any out-of-pocket expenses tied to a Covid-19 hospitalization waived. “Insurers may have also wanted to be sympathetic toward COVID-19 patients, and some may have also feared the possibility of a federal mandate to provide care free-of-charge to COVID-19 patients, so they voluntarily waived these costs,” the survey’s authors wrote. “In the last few months, the environment has shifted with safe and highly effective vaccines now widely available.”
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