The House Rules Committee will hold a hearing on the Medicare for All Act on April 30, according to an announcement posted Tuesday.
The bill is expected also to be heard in the House Budget Committee, though that hearing hasn’t yet been scheduled. Supporters of the legislation don’t have commitments for consideration from the House Energy and Commerce Committee or the House Ways and Means Committee, the committees that primarily oversee healthcare.
“It’s a serious proposal that deserves serious consideration on Capitol Hill as we work toward universal coverage,” said Rules Committee Chairman James McGovern, D-Mass.
The bill, which had the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., before becoming more mainstream among Democrats in Congress and presidential candidates, would move everyone living in the United States onto a government plan and do away almost entirely with private health insurance.
More than 100 House members have co-sponsored the legislation, but that’s a drop from previous years, and some Democrats are pushing to expand Obamacare rather than pursue the Medicare for All Act.
The House bill was introduced by Reps. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., and would go further than the current Medicare program by covering more services and putting no direct costs onto patients. Outside analysts have estimated that previous versions of the proposal would increase government spending by $32 trillion over a decade. The analyses found that the bill would lower overall healthcare costs — counting both government and private spending — relative to the current system, but that it would cause doctors and hospitals to be paid less than they are under private health insurance.
“There is no other developed country on the face of the Earth that has a health care system that is as fragmented and costly as ours,” Jayapal said in a statement. “The health outcomes and barriers to care in America are the worst of any industrialized nation. “
