“Jayapal said she’s confident she’ll have 100 co-sponsors by the time of the bill’s planned Feb. 26 release, explaining she’s not surprised members would take more time to consider it given its length.”
THE PROGNOSIS
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) speaks at a rally in 2015. (Elaine Thompson/AP)
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) is seeking buy-in from more fellow Democrats for a sweeping Medicare-for-all bill she is poised to release near the end of the month.
It’s a proposal that has become a rallying cry for progressives and 2020 presidential candidates, but it is also exposing deep rifts in the Democratic Party over exactly how to achieve universal health coverage in the United States.
The Medicare for All Act of 2019, which Jayapal had planned to roll out this week but delayed because she was seeking more co-sponsors, would create a government-run single-payer health system even more generous than the current Medicare program. Her office hasn’t publicly released the details of the upcoming measure, but Democratic members told me it would cover long-term care and mental health services, two areas where Medicare coverage is sparse.
The bill also proposes to add dental, vision, prescription drugs, women’s reproductive health services, maternity and newborn care coverage to plans that would be available to people of all ages and would require no out-of-pocket costs for any services, according to a letter Jayapal sent to colleagues on Tuesday asking them to consider co-sponsoring the effort.
“Medicare for All is the solution our country needs,” the letter said. “Patients, nurses, doctors, working families, people with disabilities and others have been telling us this for years, and it’s time that Congress listens.”
The 150-page bill had 93 co-sponsors as of Tuesday, although Jayapal spokesman Vedant Patel said more Democrats have signed on since then. That’s still fewer than the 124 Democrats who co-sponsored a much less detailed Medicare-for-all proposal from then-Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) last year. A strategist who has been working with Democrats on health-care ideas told me there have been some frustrations that more members haven’t yet signed on to Jayapal’s bill, despite the fact that there are 40 more Democrats in the House this year.
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