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Democratic presidential candidates clashed Wednesday in a debate over the future of health care in America, racial inequality and their ability to build a winning coalition to take on President Donald Trump next year. The faceoff came after hours of testimony in the impeachment inquiry of Trump and at a critical juncture in the Democratic race to run against him in 2020. With less than three months before the first voting contests, big questions hang over the front-runners, time is running out for lower tier candidates to make their move and new Democrats are launching improbable last-minute bids for the nomination. (Barrow, Weissert and Colvin, 11/20)

The story of the debate was more of punches pulled than landed. A month after her rivals hammered Ms. Warren for a lack of “Medicare for all” specifics, her fresh $20.5 trillion package to remake the health care system received surprisingly little scrutiny. (Goldmacher, Epstein and Lerer, 11/20)

So it was again. Within minutes of the start, Warren found herself on the defensive as she explained she still supports a single-payer government run insurance system — “Medicare for All” — despite her recent modified proposal to get there in phases. Not to be outdone, Sanders reminded people that he’s the original Senate sponsor of the “Medicare for All” bill that animates progressives. “I wrote the damn bill,” he quipped. Again. Biden jumped in to remind his more liberal rivals that their ideas would not pass in Congress. The former vice president touted his commitment to adding a government insurance plan to existing Affordable Care Act exchanges that now sell private insurance policies. (Riccardi and Barrow, 11/20)

Wednesday night, she leaned into more popular aspects of her healthcare plan, saying “on day one as president” she would act to bring down the cost of prescription drugs and vowing to “defend the Affordable Care Act from the sabotage of the Trump administration.” She soft-pedaled Medicare for all, which would force millions of Americans off their private insurance plans, by saying she would move in that direction only after people “have had a chance to feel it and taste it and live with it.” (Barabak, 11/20)

The more-moderate candidates onstage also defended their approaches. Buttigieg said that Americans would not like to be told what to do. “Commanding people” to go into Medicare, he said, “is not the right approach to unify the American people.” Biden used skepticism of Medicare-for-all on the part of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to bolster his own plan. “Nancy Pelosi is one of those people who doesn’t think it make sense,” he said. “We should build on Obamacare.” (Viser, Linskey and Olorunnipa, 11/21)

What Mr. Biden Said: “The fact is that right now the vast majority of Democrats do not support ‘Medicare for all.’ It couldn’t pass the United States Senate right now with Democrats. It couldn’t pass the House.” This is exaggerated. Depending on how you measure, a majority of Democratic voters do support Medicare for all. Support among Democrats in Congress is weaker than that, but it is hard to find any measure that shows a vast majority who oppose the policy. (11/20)

That statement is at odds with a Kaiser Family Foundation poll out this week. It found that 77% of Democrats support Medicare for All. Even more — 88% — support a “public option” proposal such as the one Biden advocates. It would allow people to buy into a new government insurance plan modeled on Medicare, but it would not completely replace private insurance. Overall, 53% of Americans support Medicare for All, while 43% oppose it, according to the Kaiser poll. (11/20)

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker criticized Ms. Warren’s signature proposal for higher taxes on the wealthy, calling it “cumbersome.” Mr. Booker said he agrees with her policies for universal preschool, funding for historically black colleges and universities and raising corporate tax rates, but he disagreed with Ms. Warren’s plan to pay for them. “It’s been tried by other nations. It’s hard to evaluate. We can get the same amount of revenue through just taxation,” he said. Ms. Warren responded that she was “tired of freeloading billionaires.” (Collins, Day and Glazer, 11/21)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) scored the first laugh of the fifth Democratic presidential debate on Wednesday by dredging up an old line: "I wrote the damn bill." Sanders first made the quip — a reference to his signature "Medicare for All" legislation — during the second Democratic primary debate in July after one of his rivals, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), suggested that the Vermont senator was unaware of what the single-payer health care proposal actually entailed. (Greenwood, 11/20)

“Five hundred thousand people go bankrupt because of medically related issues. They come down with cancer, and that’s a reason to go bankrupt?” — Sanders. Sanders often repeats this talking point, asserting that 500,000 people go bankrupt every year from medical issues. That’s approximately two-thirds of the 750,000 total bankruptcies per year. For this debate, however, the senator modified the wording of his claim. Sanders previously said 500,000 people a year go bankrupt from medical debt, but now he says “medically related issues.” This 51��Ƶtion more accurately reflects the study he’s quoting. (Kessler, Rizzo and Kelly, 11/21)

Kaiser Health News: Do 160 Million Americans Really Like Their Health Plans? Kind Of

Articulating his proposal for health care reform, former Vice President Joe Biden emphasized the number of Americans who, he said, were more than perfectly satisfied with the coverage they have. “160 million people like their private insurance,” Biden said during the November Democratic presidential primary debate. (Luthra, 11/21)

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., had the most speaking time in the November Democratic presidential debate. Here are the issues that have gotten the most time at the debates before this one. (Cai, Leatherby and Lee, 11/20)

Democratic presidential candidates squared off in Atlanta on Wednesday in a debate hosted by The Washington Post and MSNBC. Below is a transcript of the debate. (11/21)

Ady Barkan, an influential liberal activist who has ALS, endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president Wednesday, giving her a boost in the sometimes contentious Democratic debate over health care and Medicare-for-all. “She has the brains and the brawn and the moral clarity to overcome the challenges that we face,” Barkan said in a video. “I’ve seen up close how she confronts a problem. She listens to the people most affected, she does her homework and then she comes up with a plan. A brilliant, workable plan.” (Wang, 11/20)

A trio of polls released ahead of Wednesday's Democratic presidential debate showed a majority of Americans support Medicare for All, but offered conflicting signals about whether the proposed healthcare overhaul could hurt the party in the November 2020 general election. As with the previous four debates, Wednesday's televised clash in Atlanta is likely to be dominated by the intra-party battle over how best to expand healthcare coverage to millions of Americans. (Ax and Becker, 11/20)