WASHINGTON—In yet another plank in a “platform” they’re taking to the voters before the Nov. 3 election, House Democrats unveiled an 84-page agenda of health care improvements—with the addition of vision, hearing, and dental benefits for Medicare recipients. But it was notable for what it skirted—Medicare For All—as well as what it included, such as reproductive rights for all.
That means universal access to abortion, including federal funding for abortions Medicaid recipients need. Congress originally banned that funding 50 years ago. And the GOP-named U.S. Supreme Court majority destroyed universal abortion coverage in 2022—an action which split the country into pro-abortion blue states and anti-abortion red states. The High Court ruling also led to Democratic congressional gains that fall.
The health care agenda, detailed in Politico, is the latest rollout by congressional Democrats as they attempt to show voters they stand for various issues and ideas, rather than sticking to denunciations of the GOP, its dictatorial President Donald Trump, and Republican corporate backers.
Prior “planks” fleshed out what the Democrats mean by “affordability” and advocated a series of pro-worker laws. Those include the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, enacting paid family and medical leave, doubling the current $7.25 federal minimum wage, and restoring federal union contracts covering a million workers. Trump trashed those pacts.
But none of the planks, including the health care agenda, demand a complete overhaul of a capitalist system and its exploitation of workers for the benefit of Wall Street and the corporate few. Of course, no one expected they would.
However, they do demand elimination of some of the more devastating practices, such as medical monopolies and oligopolies, and curbing so-called pharmacy benefit managers.
A task force headed by Reps. Alexandria Occasion-Cortez, D-N.Y., a leader among progressives and a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, and Terry Sewell, D-Ala., a Congressional Black Caucus member, crafted the health care agenda.
The task force claimed to consult with 139 Democratic lawmakers and various interest groups while crafting the document. It “also solicited feedback from 145 stakeholder groups, including patient advocacy organizations, trade associations, hospitals, and physician groups,” wire services reported. The agenda is silent on whether the task force consulted workers and unions.
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who unveiled the agenda, admitted Medicare For All has wide support among his troops—114 sponsors—but that backing isn’t unanimous.
So the agenda lists it as one alternative, along with a weaker cousin, the “public option.” The hospital lobby killed the public option 15 years ago as lawmakers crafted the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare. They also ignored more than a dozen unions, led by National Nurses United, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt., who campaigned for Medicare For All.
The Democrats’ top health care priorities include expanding Medicare to cover vision, hearing, and dental care; restoring the $1 trillion 10-year cuts to Medicare and Medicaid from the Republicans’ so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” last year; and lowering the age of Medicare eligibility.
Anticipating those cuts in their income, many health care institutions, especially in rural areas, are already closing buildings and firing workers.
The agenda also pledges Democratic efforts to curb prescription drug prices for everyone, not just Medicare recipients, cap out-of-pocket health care spending at $5,000 per person per year, and restrict the clout of—but not eliminate—so-called pharmacy benefit managers.
The PBMs are middlemen who account for a big chunk of health care “overhead” spending while telling insurers and pharmacies what drugs those groups can pay for—and what drugs they won’t.
Other key points include:
- Breaking up health care monopolies and oligopolies.
The agenda notes six big companies control the U.S. health insurance market, and that financiers—especially venture capitalists answerable to nobody—are swooping in to buy hospital chains and doctors’ practices, uniting the entire health care sequence, from an MD’s office to a hospital bed. That makes profits rather than patients the priority, the agenda says.
- Capping individual out-of-pocket spending on health care at 8% of income.
- Eliminating Trump’s recently imposed low yearly and lifetime limits on federal student loans to medical students. They’re not “professionals,” Trump said.
- Instituting minimum wage coverage and overtime protections for health care workers. Many, especially in home care, are not covered, thanks to racial prejudice built into the original 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, the minimum wage-overtime pay law.
- Expanding Medicare to cover long-term care of patients at home.
- Banning medical debt from credit reports, as the Biden administration did. Trump reversed that ban, downgrading the credit ratings of millions of people, making it harder for them to get auto loans, home loans, and even student loans.
- Passing the Dream Act, and ending roundups of people of color who came to the U.S. as kids. Those “Dreamers” include a disproportionate number of female health care workers.
- Banning insurer use of artificial intelligence to decide who gets insurance coverage and what those policies cover, and who doesn’t.
“HR1 has been devastating,” the agenda says, referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill, which Democrats dub the “The Big Ugly Bill” because the Medicare, Medicaid, food stamp, and infrastructure money cuts all go to pay for its $4.5 trillion 10-year tax cut for the 1%.
The Democratic agenda admits the obvious: The U.S. health care non-system, the most-expensive, per person, in the world, is broken. The agenda says Trump and the GOP only made a bad system even worse.
“Affordable Care Act marketplace premiums have increased by nearly 60%,” and five million people have dropped out. Employer-provided health insurance premium increases have outpaced inflation.
“When the bill is fully implemented, an estimated 15 million people will have lost their health coverage, one-third of all rural hospitals will have closed, and every state will have experienced significant economic and employment losses.”
“Decades of unchecked corporate consolidation, compounded by severe workforce shortages and a complete underinvestment in primary care, have left patients, employers, small businesses, and American taxpayers paying more for less,” the 84-page agenda summarizes.
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