The Democratic Health Care Hoax
All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.
Note: I keep as much of this Substack free as I can, but writing takes time and energy and if you’re able to subscribe here at one of the paid tiers and support my work you’d be doing me a solid. If you’re unable to afford a paid subscription, consider subscribing for free or send me a message and I’ll gladly comp your subscription.
Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries recently appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press and fielded a question about Medicare For All from host Kristen Welker, who among other things noted his co-sponsorship of Medicare for all legislation from 2013 to 2021. Here’s the rest of their exchange:
Jeffries: Well, listen, these are all conversations that the House Democratic Caucus is going to have to have. Right now, we’re focused on November 3rd, not January 3rd. What we are promising the American people is that we’re going to fight to make health care affordable for every single American. And we know there’s a lot of damage that Republicans have done that we’ve got to restore and repair. For instance, Republicans have enacted the largest cut to Medicaid in American history. More than a trillion dollars or so has been cut from Medicaid. And what you’re going to have is about 14 million Americans lose access to healthcare.
Welker: Do you personally support Medicare for all? Do you personally support Medicare for all?
Jeffries: No. As you indicated, I haven’t co-sponsored the Medicare for all legislation that has been introduced over the last several years. I do think we need to figure out how to fix our broken health care system and then build something better once we repair the damage that has been done. Now, that will include doing things like extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits so that more than 20 million people who have seen their health insurance premiums skyrocket in some cases by up to $1,000 a month, that’s not sustainable. And that’s something that Donald Trump and Republicans have visited upon the American people.
Pressed by Welker a third time, Jeffries then concluded the exchange like this:
I think as you’ve uh indicated in your question to me, it’s not legislation that I currently am co-sponsoring or that I support. Okay. But we do support the notion that we’ve got to find a path forward to fix our broken health care system and make health care affordable for every single American.
So, there you have it. The House leader of America’s nominal liberal opposition party opposes Medicare For All but boldly supports “the notion” that Democrats “have got to find a path forward” to fix a broken system and make healthcare “affordable” for every single American.
