What They Are Saying About House Medicare For All Legislation

“Without A Price Tag” … “Fewer Co-Sponsors” … “Would Disrupt Coverage” … “Political Danger” … “Sounding The Alarm”…

As some Members of Congress introduce Medicare for All legislation in the U.S. House today, the news coverage of their proposal is already coming in – and it’s not a pretty picture…

“House Democrats to release ‘Medicare for All’’ bill – without a price tag,” reads the headline from POLITICO.  The bill, they report, “doesn’t include a price tag or specific proposals for financing the new system, which analysts estimate would cost tens of trillions of dollars over a decade,” adding that “[t]he legislation initially boasts fewer co-sponsors than the 124 Democrats who signed onto a previous version of Medicare for All bill last year,” and House Democratic leaders are “instead pushing the caucus to focus on strengthening Obamacare and protecting the law’s protections for pre-existing conditions, a message that helped Democrats win back the House in November.”

While also noting that the bill’s author “[Rep. Pramila] Jayapal didn’t say how much it would cost or how it would be funded,”Bloomberg added: “Perhaps the greatest political danger for Democrats is that Medicare for all would disrupt coverage for about 156 million Americans who get their insurance from an employer.” (As Kaiser Family Foundation CEO Drew Altman recently wrote, employer-based insurance is “by far the single largest form of coverage” in the nation, and a recent Kaiser poll found that support for Medicare for All plummets when respondents learn it would eliminate the choice and control they currently enjoy through employer-based and other private coverage.)

Between its enormous price tag, its elimination of patient choice and control, and the massive disruptions it would cause to Americans’ coverage and care, it’s no wonder The Hill reports that “[c]entrist Democrats who helped their party win back the House majority with victories in key swing districts last fall are sounding the alarm that the liberal push for ‘Medicare for all’ could haunt them as they try to defend their seats and keep control of the House.”

As Rep. Jayapal’s hometown paper The Seattle Times reports, the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future weighed in: “’This costly, disruptive one-size-fits-all proposal is the wrong path forward,’ Lauren Crawford Shaver, the [Partnership’s] executive director, said of Jayapal’s bill.  ‘The price tag would be enormous.’”

While the authors of the legislation being introduced today have chosen not to include any information on what it would cost or how the American people would be forced to pay for it, independent studies from the liberal-leaning Urban Institute and the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center have estimated the costs of similar Medicare for All proposals at more than $32 trillion over ten years.  As NBC News reports, implementing such a plan “requires a massive new source of tax revenue.”

• To read the Partnership’s statement on this proposal, CLICK HERE.
• To learn more about the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, CLICK HERE.