On January 24th John Conyers introduced H.R. 676, the Medicare for All Act. He had 50 cosponsors on that first day, mostly progressives, but New Dem Eliot Engel signed on and so did a member of the House Democratic leadership, Jim Clyburn. No other members of the leadership signed on that day-- nor since-- no Nancy Pelosi, no Steny Hoyer, no Joe Crowley, no Ben Ray Lujan.
Now that ObamaCare is “the law of the land” for the foreseeable future, as House Speaker Ryan grimly conceded after the failure of RyanCare, a new situation is upon us. The time is past for comparing ObamaCare to what preceded it.
Brand New Congress put out that graphic just above, presumably as a reminder to House Democrats that Democratic voters very much favor H.R. 676, John Conyer's bill to make Medicare available to all Americans. Paul Ryan and his leadership team have it buried in the Subcommittee on Indian, Insular and Alaska Native Affairs but there were 51 original co-sponsors and since then over two dozen more have signed on.
This has been a tumultuous week for healthcare reform. First there was the pleasantly quick defeat of the American Health Care Act in the House of Representatives Friday afternoon. Then, that evening, Senator Sanders spoke at a town hall in Vermont with Senator Pat Leahy and Representative Peter Welch where he announced that he would introduce a Medicare for All bill. Medicare for All and Bernie supporters lit up social media with their excitement over the announcement. This should have been great news, but it wasn’t exactly.
Blue America first met Jeff Merkley almost a decade ago when he was Speaker of Oregon's state House. There seemed so much promise in his candidacy for the U.S. Senate and we endorsed him-- and have never regretted it for a moment. At the time, we introduced him as someone who had been an outstanding and accomplished statewide leader who not only had good ideas, but translated this ideas into legislation.
If we had a real president in the White House, instead of a grifter pretending to be a clown, he would have announced that his party has tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act and that the next step is to have the Republicans and the Democrats sit down together and figure out-- for the good of the country-- a nonpartisan/non-ideological approach (based on Trump's own campaign promises) for fixing the problems in the ACA.
The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans. . . . We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing. — Donald Trump, The America We Deserve (2000) The new American Health Care Act has been unveiled, and critics are calling it more […]
