House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is laying out her strategy on health care and first up is improvements to “Obamacare” and legislation to lower prescription drug costs. “Medicare for all” will get hearings.
Pelosi and President Donald Trump have been sounding similar themes about the need to address the high drug costs. But her plans to broaden financial help for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act are unlikely to find takers among Republicans.
Either way, Democrats believe voters gave them a mandate on health care in the midterm elections that returned the House to their control.
Last year, Canadians waited a median of almost 20 weeks to receive specialist treatment after being referred by a general practitioner, according to a new report from The Fraser Institute. In practical terms, that’s the equivalent of getting a referral this week and waiting until May for treatment.
Such waits are endemic to government-run healthcare systems.
Canada’s single-payer system, which prohibits private insurance for medically necessary procedures, is a prime example of the pitfalls of total government control. Twenty weeks of waiting is bad enough. But some areas in Canada fare even worse. The median wait for treatment from a specialist following referral from a GP in New Brunswick is nearly a year.
In her first speech as speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi made it clear that she knows that health care is key to why voters sent Democrats to Congress.
“In the past two years the American people have spoken,” Pelosi told members of Congress and their families who were gathered Thursday in the House chamber for the opening day of the session.
“Tens of thousands of public events were held, hundreds of thousands of people turned out, millions of calls were made, countless families, even sick little children — our little lobbyists, our little lobbyists — bravely came forward to tell their stories and they made a big difference,” said Pelosi, a California Democrat.