Hayes’ health care push is not Medicare for All
WASHINGTON — Rep. Jahana Hayes campaigned on Medicare for All, which would replace the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — with a government single-payer system that Republicans are all too eager to equate with socialism and socialized medicine.
But Hayes insisted Medicare for All is “the next step in the evolution of our health care system” and is a co-sponsor of the main House legislative vehicle for establishing Medicare for All within four years.
But lately Hayes has parked Medicare for All on the back lot and positioned herself as a champion of bolstering Obamacare and its apparatus of federal and state exchanges such as Access Health CT.
The Democratic House on Thursday approved the Strengthening Health Care and Lowering Prescription Drug Costs Act, aimed at improving and shoring up the ACA. Hayes chipped in an amendment that would bring health care “navigators” to Access Health CT and the 11 other state-based exchanges.
“Navigators” are essentially advisers who help prospective insurance policy purchasers through the maze of health care plans. As part of its overall effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare — or undermine it, at least — the Trump administration has virtually cut off all funding for such advisers.
“My background in education makes it hard for me to understand why we would ever want to eliminate tools that help educate the public about how to access health care,” said Hayes, famously 2016 Teacher of the Year for her classroom skills at Waterbury’s John F. Kennedy High School.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s main arm for electing House Democrats, designed a GIF for Hayes that hails her support for the health-care bill in vintage comic bill tones and typefaces. Instead of “Pow” and “Bop” when super heroes land punches, the viewer sees LOWERING (health care costs), PROTECTING (people with preexisting conditions), and (making prescription drugs) AFFORDABLE!
The ads are part of a targeted ad campaign on Facebook, the DCCC said.
Well, it’s not the healthcare overhaul Hayes hoped for on Jan. 3 when she was sworn in for her first terms. But if she can’t be with the policy she loves, she appears to be doing her best loving the policy she’s with.
*** Although the tides on gun violence prevention legislation appear to be shifting a bit, the cold hard fact remains that any legislation passed by the Democratic House has to also win approval in the Republican Senate. And that’s to say nothing about what happens to it when it reaches the desk of President Donald Trump, a regular attendee and speech-giver at the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association.
But on Friday, a House Appropriations subcommittee approved a $25 million increase in funding for school violence prevention programs, the bread and butter of Sandy Hook Promise.
The money would bolster programs championed by SHP to help teachers, administrators, students, parents and community groups reach out to troubled youth who display a potential for violence. And in addition, it would also build “threat-assessment teams” in schools to help pinpoint exactly who is in need of help.
“This funding is critical to protecting our children,” said Mark Barden, co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise who lost his son, Daniel, in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting that took the lives of 20 children and six adult staff members. “We know that violence and suicide in our schools are preventable when we teach students and adults to ‘know the signs’ and reach out when they see someone hurting or need help themselves.”
Federal involvement in such programs stems from the bipartisan 2018 School Violence Prevention Act, for which SHP was a critical promoter. These kinds of programs happen to be something Democrats and Republicans can agree on — unlike the measure passed in the House in February to require background checks on virtually all gun purchases, not just ones that take place in federally licensed firearms stores.
The Senate response to the background-check bill so far has been total crickets.
But it’s fair to say increased funding for school violence prevention to $125 million in fiscal 2020 has a much brighter future in the Senate.