House Democrats to hold hearings for Medicare for All, with Pelosi's support
9 replies, posted
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/democrats-plan-to-hold-hearings-on-medicare-for-all/2019/01/03/7051eccc-0f6c-11e9-84fc-d58c33d6c8c7_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.950a6e937bcc
The new Democratic majority in the House will hold the first hearings on Medicare-for-All legislation, a longtime goal of the party’s left, after Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi lent her
support for the process.
“It’s a huge step forward to have the speaker’s support,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who will be the House sponsor of the legislation, usually denoted as HR 676. “We have to
push on the inside while continuing to build support for this on the outside.”
Some version of universal health care has been a Democratic goal for decades. The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, first introduced in 2003 by then-Rep. John Conyers Jr.
of Michigan, has become the vehicle for Democrats who want to bring single-payer, Canada-style health care to the United States.
The incoming chairmen of those committees, Reps. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), support Medicare for All. “The American people deserve to know what the
various options for Medicare for All would mean to them as health care consumers and taxpayers,” Yarmuth said.
Jayapal said supporters hope to release legislation in “the next couple of weeks” and hold hearings in a number of committees. “This will ensure that Medicare for All is part of the
2020 Democratic presidential platforms,” said Jayapal.
and there's still democratic leadership that's unsure universal healthcare coverage is even appropriate.
Aside from the bullshit Republicans are going to pull there's still a lot of things that need to be taken care of if Medicare For All were to be a thing. Unless real nationalization of healthcare happens private institutions are just going to have another reason to raise their costs since everything would be paid for by the government. That will not only continue to line executives pockets but also create a point for Republicans to stand on with costs being too much.
While it would be a step in the right direction healthcare is something that either needs to be nationalized or heavily regulated, otherwise we're just going to have a money pit for the rich to get richer off of.
Thanks, Bernie.
And also his mostly active supporters (and old nor new serving politicians like AOC) into joining Pro-Medicare for All political organizations and movements like Democratic Socialists of America for popularizing issues like this.
It's a step. Let's keep up the pressure.
They don't need nationalisation, they need reforms that remove anticompetitive laws like "Certificates of Need". The reality is the more the US government has in controling how US healthcare is carried out, the more opportunity for their lobbyists to slip their hands in.
it would be extremely dangerous to leave it all up to the DHS as one bad administrator could greatly affect the effectiveness (and give reasons to repeal it) medicare for all at least has the benefit of an existing program and price structure, though any medicare for all proposal should allow price negotiations.
Ideally it would also come with price controls but that would be challenged every way possible in the courts.
Health care doesn't need to be nationalized. Health insurance does, and until it is the health of the American people will be of secondary importance to how much profit can be made off of them.
Ya that's kind of the only way to get our healthcare system to a single payer one is to take the existing insurance system which works great for the people who it works great for and give everybody a fallback public coverage option, which in the long run would actually reap a huge benefit for the insurance companies as a lot of the high risk people would migrate to the government plan, and it would be amazing for small businesses because they wouldn't have to compete with large corporate benefit plans.
But of course the AEI and the other alphabet of business groups would never conceed that public health inusrance would be beneficial to small and medium size businesses and much better in the long run than say a corporate tax cut.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.