Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

HOUSE TO take up Medicarefo­r-all.

- DAVID WEIGEL

WASHINGTON — 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 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. That legislatio­n was typically sidelined, even when Democrats had power; in 2009 and 2010, when the House passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the “Medicare-forall” package was not part of the discussion. But in his 2016 campaign for president, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., championed Medicare-for-all. The following year, for the first time, a majority of House Democrats co-sponsored HR 676. Pelosi, who had been one of those co-sponsors, said throughout the 2018 campaign that Democrats were free to discuss many other health care programs. She strongly suggested that a Democratic House would at least hold hearings on the far-reaching Jayapal bill; on Wednesday, Jayapal got Pelosi’s commitment to hearings in the Rules and Budget committees. 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 Medicarefo­r-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. With Democrats locked out of power in the Senate and the White House, Jayapal said that supporters of universal health care were proceeding “one step at a time” and that getting the first real hearings on the bill would force a larger discussion. “This will ensure that Medicare-for-all is part of the 2020 Democratic presidenti­al platforms,” said Jayapal. Also Thursday, the House was set to amend, but not eliminate, the “pay-as-yougo” rule that requires any new spending to be offset with deficit reduction. While Democratic leaders have pointed out that the spending rule is statutory and would remain active in the Senate no matter what the House does, a number of left-leaning Democrats have accused Pelosi of preemptive­ly making it harder to pass major changes. Jayapal, a co-chairman of the Congressio­nal Progressiv­e Caucus who helped reshape the rule, said that those concerns were unfounded. “The critical thing here is: Do we have a commitment to waive paygo on critical bills? I think we do,” she said. “I think we’ve not only got a commitment for that, but for hearings on those bills, and we’ve never had that before.”

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