Chairman Yarmuth: Medicare For All Is ‘Not Going Anywhere’

WASHINGTON – As the House Committee on the Budget prepares to hold a hearing next week on the implications of a one-size-fits-all government-run health care system – also known as Medicare for all – the panel’s chairman, U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) is the latest prominent Democrat to throw cold water on the proposal.

The Washington Post reports:

“A lot of people, I think, co-sponsored Pramila’s bill for the same reason they co-sponsored H.R. 676; it was the metaphor for Medicare-for-all,” said Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), the chairman of the House Budget Committee, referring to the legislation from progressive caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). “Now, people have seen some of the details and said, ‘Okay, we need to look at this.’ There doesn’t seem to be much of a sense of urgency because it’s not going anywhere.”

The Post also notes the “decline in support for the actual Medicare-for-all bill, which would replace most private insurance with Medicare over a two-year phase-in.”

By the end of the past Congress, the legislative vehicle for Medicare-for-all, H.R. 676, had 124 co-sponsors in the House.  The new Congress has 40 more Democrats in the House, but the new version of Medicare-for-all, H. R. 1384, has just 108 co-sponsors.

Next week’s Budget Committee hearing will feature testimony by experts from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which recently issued a report stating that Medicare for all “could adversely affect access to and quality of care,” lead to “a shortage of providers, longer wait times,” and “would significantly increase government spending and require substantial additional government resources,” which would demand massive tax increases on American families.

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