Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren could be coming along with exactly the right healthcare bill at exactly the right time. Her legislation would build on the Affordable Care Act, providing more financial assistance to people buying insurance in the marketplace, capping out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs for consumers with high drug costs, and creating new rules for insurance companies to protect consumers.
The legislation, called the Consumer Health Insurance Protection Act, would offer people buying health insurance on their own more financial assistance―and allow more people to qualify for that assistance. Nobody would have to pay more than 8.5 percent of income on premiums.
But as Warren made clear in a January speech before the consumer group Families USA, she understands that enacting a single-payer plan would be difficult―and that, as a result, private insurance probably won’t disappear overnight. And so she also wants to focus on what can be done right away to subject the industry to the type of stringent consumer protections she has already successfully championed in the financial sector.
“So long as private health insurance exists, we should require these companies to provide coverage that is at least as good and priced as reasonably as the coverage offered by our public health care programs,” Warren said in January.
Sanders is actually a co-sponsor of the Warren bill, as are Democratic Sens. Kamala Harris (Calif.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Tammy Baldwin (Wis.).
The timing on her proposal is particularly good. The eighth anniversary of the ACA brings with it a public awareness of the importance of keeping and building on it. In polling during the 2017 elections and the special elections this year, healthcare rises to the top of issues for voters. Watching Republicans fight for the past eight years to end affordable health insurance for millions—and coming within one senator’s vote of it happening last year—has galvanized the electorate.
We’re at a point where nearly 60 percent of voters in the latest Kaiser survey support Medicare for All. That shows just how far the public has come in understanding healthcare policy and what’s possible for it. Warren and team are going into the 2018 election with a smart plan.