House Democrats to Hold First 'Medicare for All' Hearing

The House Rules Committee on Tuesday at 10am Eastern will hold the first-ever congressional hearing about a bill to establish a single-payer, ‘Medicare for All’ healthcare system.

While Rules Committee hearings are typically the last destination for legislation before it reaches the House floor, that won’t be the case for the Medicare for All Act (H.R. 1384) as Tuesday’s hearing is an “original jurisdiction” hearing to give members an opportunity to learn about the policy. Chairman James McGovern (D-MA), a cosponsor of the bill, called it “a serious proposal that deserves serious consideration on Capitol Hill as we work toward universal coverage.”

The bill, introduced by Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Debbie Dingell (D-MI), would provide individuals residing in the U.S. with healthcare for all “medically necessary care”, including: primary care, prevention, dietary and nutritional therapies, prescription drugs, emergency care, long-term care, mental health services, dental services, and vision care.

It would prohibit private health insurance from offering benefits that duplicates those described above, and healthcare providers would be paid for their operating expenses (like salaries and medical devices) each fiscal quarter based on compensation guidelines established by the government.

Jayapal’s bill doesn’t include any way of financing the expansion of Medicare to all Americans through tax increases, and while she alluded to a “wealth tax” and a rollback of recent tax cuts being part of the financing, no description of how Medicare for All would be paid for has been added to her website’s Medicare for All resources page.

The projected cost of Medicare for All will nonetheless be a prominent part of Tuesday’s hearing, as Rules Committee Republicans invited economist Charles Blahous of the free-market Mercatus Center to testify. He analyzed a very similar Medicare for All bill sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and found that it would cost at least $32.6 trillion over 10 years ― a gap so large that “a doubling of all currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan.”

Tuesday’s hearing is only the start of a big week for Medicare for All on Capitol Hill, as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Wednesday is expected to release an assessment of how the design of a single-payer healthcare system would affect its cost. That will give both advocates and detractors of single-payer healthcare more to think about.

— Eric Revell

(Photo Credit: mollytkadams via Flickr / Creative Commons)