Carl: Very interesting thoughts. Not likely to come true.
Richard
Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 15, 2019, at 8:19 AM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
More blather, proving once again that we have before us a government
of a few people, by a few people, and for the Ruling Class. Democrats
need to reclaim their Democratic Party and once in control the
Democratic Party should set standards, screen those wishing to run for
office as representatives of the Democratic Party, and if they violate
their contract with the Democratic Party, they should be fined and
removed from future consideration.
All "outside money" should be held suspect.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/15/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ways and Means Committee Chair Doesn't Want Medicare for All Hearing to
Mention "Medicare for All"
By Ryan Grim and Akela Lacy, The Intercept
14 June 19
In preparation for Wednesday's hearing on Medicare for All before the
powerful House Ways and Means Committee, the panel's chair met privately
with Democrats to lay out how he wants it to unfold.
Rep. Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat who has been in office since
1989, told the Democrats on the panel that he didn't want the phrase
"Medicare for All" to be used. Instead, he said, the hearing should focus
on
all the different ways to achieve "universal health care" or "universal
health coverage," which he said was a better term to deploy. Medicare for
All, he argued, was wrong on policy and is a political loser, sources
present for the meeting, held last Wednesday, told The Intercept.
Neal confirmed that he recommended a shift in emphasis. Asked whether he
encouraged members in private to focus tomorrow's hearing more on
"universal
health care" than Medicare for All, Neal said the conversation would be
more
about "universal health care and access," pointing to his continued support
for the Affordable Care Act.
"I think what we're talking about, we're talking about universal health
care
and access," he told The Intercept. "That's the emphasis. So we have not
ruled anything out or ruled anything in. And we think that continuing to
gathering information - I mean, I helped to write the Affordable Care Act,
I'm naturally in favor of expanding it, and, you know, 100% of the children
in Massachusetts are covered, 97% of the adults. We've had a good
experience
with it."
The hearing will be held at 10 a.m. on Wednesday in the Longworth House
Office Building and will include five witnesses, all of whom are, at a
minimum, sympathetic to Medicare for All. That the committee is holding a
hearing at all on Medicare for All is a win for the Congressional
Progressive Caucus and its co-chair, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and
signals momentum for the legislation. A Rules Committee hearing in April
marked the first of its kind in history for the push for single-payer, and
moving to the bigger stage of Ways and Means, which has jurisdiction over
taxation and government revenue, represents a new high-water mark for
Medicare for All. Holding hearings is the start of creating the legislative
history of a bill and often signals - as it does in this case - that public
support for a measure has risen to a significant enough level that Congress
is willing to spend its limited attention on the issue.
Jayapal, a lead sponsor of the House Medicare for All bill, and her
co-chair
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisc., won a commitment for a Ways and Means hearing
from
Nancy Pelosi as the party leader was working to round up votes in her bid
for House speaker. But converting that pledge into a hearing required the
assent of the committee's chair, Neal. When Neal came to speak to the CPC
on
April 30, Jayapal pressed him in person, and he committed there to the
hearing. The result is Wednesday's hearing, but its title, "Pathways to
Universal Health Coverage," hints at the internal tension.
Some of that tension comes from Democrats who are pushing alternatives to
Medicare for All, such as Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N.Y., the lead sponsor of a
measure to allow people over the age of 50 to buy into Medicare. After Neal
consented to the Medicare for All hearing at Jayapal's request, Higgins
pressured him for his own hearing on the Medicare buy-in proposal. (Higgins
had declared publicly he would not support Pelosi for speaker in 2018 but
relented when she publicly agreed to make the Medicare buy-in legislation a
priority and recognized him as the lead sponsor of it.) Instead of doing
multiple hearings, Neal told Higgins to include his proposal in the
Medicare
for All hearing. Neal and one of his staffers both confirmed to The
Intercept that the measure was added to tomorrow's hearing at Higgins's
request. "As a part of the agreement with the speaker, we were sort of
abiding by that agreement," the staffer accompanying Neal on Capitol Hill
said.
Higgins said Neal including the buy-in measure in tomorrow's hearing was "a
good acknowledgement of the speaker following through on her commitment to
make a good faith effort to get Medicare at 50 on the agenda." He said it
was "fair" to say that Neal had been encouraging people to frame tomorrow's
discussion around pathways to universal health coverage rather than
focusing
on Medicare for All.
"If we do nothing to try to get a Medicare for All - first of all, there's
not consensus on what 'Medicare for All' means," he said. "Is that Medicare
for everybody that wants it? Or is that Medicare for everybody, and it's
compulsory?" Higgins warned against "obliterating" private insurance, which
he said lost the party support with the passing of the Affordable Care Act.
Higgins supported the ACA at the time but said that while it was "deeply
flawed in many, many ways," its biggest flaw was "that it didn't have a
public option, because you need that countervailing force to private
insurance. And I think that if we could accomplish that this year, that
would be a major accomplishment."
But getting rid of private insurance all together would be a mistake,
Higgins said. "Do we really wanna create that schism going into 2020 for
ourselves but also for the presidential election? The thing that we should
be looking at - and we can do this all at the same time - is Medicare at 50
and concurrently working toward a more ambitious Medicare plan for those
who
want it. I mean, let's be practical about this stuff."
Neal is widely known to be skeptical of Medicare for All, and insurance
companies and drug makers are among his biggest financial backers. He
fended
off a progressive primary challenge in 2018 but is likely to face a renewed
one in 2020. He was a close ally of former caucus chair Joe Crowley, and
privately among his colleagues is hostile to the new progressive energy -
and support for single-payer - that swept into the House in 2018.
Speaking last week at a workforce development event at Springfield
Technical
Community College in Massachusetts, Neal said the two people he turned to
most for economic advice were Bob Rubin and Jack Lew, both of whom are
former secretaries of the Treasury, according to a source who was at the
event. Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs executive and a chairman emeritus of
the Council on Foreign Relations, argued in a May op-ed in the New York
Times that the secret to cutting health care costs is to spend more on
social programs like "food stamps, free school lunches and public housing."
Neal actively opposed efforts by the CPC to place progressive members onto
the Ways and Means Committee, people involved in that fight told The
Intercept. Other chairs of top committees, including Frank Pallone at
Energy
and Commerce and Maxine Waters at Financial Services, did not object to
progressives joining their panel, which has created an ideological
imbalance
across the committees.
Neal did allow some members of the CPC to join, but generally he only
accepted those who are also members or allies of the business-friendly New
Democrat Coalition, such as Reps. Jimmy Panetta, Steven Horsford, and
Brendan Boyle. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., was added to the committee and
subsequently joined the CPC. Neal also welcomed Rep. Stephanie Murphy,
D-Fla., one of the most conservative Democrats in the caucus, onto the
panel, as well as Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., who, like Murphy, is in the
right-wing Blue Dog Coalition. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.,
meanwhile, sought a spot on the Ways and Means committee and was turned
away, landing instead on Financial Services and Oversight and Reform.
Jayapal, who does not sit on Ways and Means and was not at the meeting with
Neal, said that she is confident the hearing will nevertheless be a boost
to
the effort. "I wasn't in the room, but I would just say it is impossible to
have a hearing on Medicare for All without saying those words," she said.
"I
am confident that our Medicare for All supporters on the committee will
talk
about the policy and the bill completely. And I am 100% focused on the fact
that this is a historic hearing in a major committee of record - something
that has never happened before. We appreciate the chairman holding this
Medicare for All hearing."
One member of the panel who heard Neal's remarks but declined to be named
said that Neal's message was less about trashing Medicare for All and more
about making sure to highlight alternative paths to universal health care.
Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., another Democrat on the committee, said he wasn't
at the private meeting but that members have been encouraged to look at all
available options. "We talk a little bit about everything, but I don't
think
we've arrived at any point in terms of it," he told The Intercept. Asked if
Neal was pushing members away from Medicare for All, Davis said, "I'm not
sure I'd say he was necessarily the lead on the thinking around that, but
certainly in our health meetings we've discussed everything."
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