While Republicans were busy hacking nearly $1 trillion out of Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, progressive Democrats held a shadow hearing Wednesday to make the case that the American healthcare system has, in fact, completely collapsed. The timing was not subtle. It was not meant to be.
The Hearing Nobody in Power Would Hold
The Congressional Progressive Caucus, led by Pramila Jayapal and Debbie Dingell, convened what they called a shadow hearing on Medicare for All. Shadow hearing, for the uninitiated, means Republicans who run the actual committees refused to hold one, so Democrats did it themselves. Which tells you everything about who wants to talk about healthcare costs and who very much does not.
The hearing drew testimony from nurses, doctors, and public health advocates, all of whom delivered variations on the same core message: the system is broken, people are dying because of it, and the only people winning are the executives collecting eight-figure salaries to deny your claims. According to The Guardian, National Nurses United, Physicians for a National Health Plan, and Public Citizen all testified in support of single-payer coverage.
The Numbers, Which Are Genuinely Damning
Debbie Dingell opened with a sentence that should be printed on every insurance denial letter in America. "We spend twice as much per person on healthcare compared to other countries that have systems like Medicare for All, and we still have 28 million Americans without insurance," she said, per The Guardian. An increase in the uninsured since 2023. More spending, worse outcomes. That is the deal Americans are getting.
A 2020 Yale epidemiology study cited at the hearing found Medicare for All would save roughly 68,000 lives per year and cut national healthcare spending by about 13 percent, which works out to around $450 billion. Dr. Diljeet K. Singh, president of Physicians for a National Health Plan, testified that at least 35 cents of every healthcare dollar gets eaten by insurance administration and corporate profit before it ever touches a patient. Thirty-five cents. Gone. Every dollar.
Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva described growing up near a superfund site, watching family members die of cancer, and undergoing a hysterectomy at an early age. She described what the symptoms of the current system actually look like in practice: highest out-of-pocket expenses of any high-income nation, highest medical bankruptcy rate, worst outcomes concentrated among lower-income Americans, people of color, and rural communities. This is not an abstract policy debate. These are real outcomes for real people.
What Republicans Were Doing at the Same Time
While this hearing was happening, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was moving forward with nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts baked in, along with provisions allowing Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire. The Guardian reports both elements are part of the same legislative package Republicans just passed. So the governing party's answer to a broken healthcare system is to take a sledgehammer to the parts that are holding it together.
Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury made a point that deserves to be screamed from a rooftop. The Trump administration's war on Iran has cost $37.5 billion so far, per The Guardian. Thirty-seven and a half billion dollars. Nobody asked where that money was coming from. Nobody demanded a 10-year budget score on the bombing runs. But propose extending healthcare coverage to every American and suddenly fiscal responsibility becomes the most important value in Washington.
Kids First: Andy Kim's Move
Senator Andy Kim introduced legislation Tuesday that would enroll all children in Medicare until age 26, according to The Guardian. It is the kind of incremental step that does not satisfy Medicare for All advocates but might actually survive the current political environment. Over half of the House Democratic caucus has now co-sponsored full Medicare for All legislation, which is a number that gets less attention than it deserves.
Congressman Greg Casar said at the hearing that Medicare for All remains the Progressive Caucus's top priority for healthcare reform, and that it should be the top priority for the whole Democratic Party. Congressman Jesus Chuy Garcia put it plainly: "Healthcare should not be a privilege determined by your job, your income, or your zip code." Hard to argue with that. People try anyway.
The Polling, Which Is Complicated and Also Being Used Dishonestly
Here is where it gets politically messy. The center-left Searchlight Institute has been urging Democrats to back off Medicare for All, citing a poll by Tavern Research showing that while a majority or plurality support single-payer in theory, 70 percent of respondents said they preferred to keep their current insurance. That number gets cited a lot by people who oppose the policy.
Here is the part that does not get cited: 45 percent of the respondents in that poll already get their insurance through Medicare or Medicaid, per The Guardian. They are already in a government program. When you ask people if they want to keep Medicare, a lot of them say yes, because Medicare is the thing progressives are trying to expand. The poll question did not account for that. A separate poll from the Medicare for All PAC in November found 52 percent of voters preferred a Democrat who supported universal coverage over a Republican opposing it, with 90 percent support among Democratic voters specifically.
The Dingo Take
Let's be clear about what happened Wednesday. Democrats who have no committee power, no majority, and no ability to force a vote held a hearing in a room that doesn't officially matter to talk about a policy that might actually fix something. And it was still more substantive than anything the majority party has offered on healthcare, unless you count "cut a trillion dollars from Medicaid" as a healthcare plan, which you should not.
Debbie Dingell said she is going to get Medicare for All over the finish line before she dies. Her father-in-law wrote the original Medicare legislation. Her late husband introduced Medicare for All repeatedly over a career spanning decades. The Dingell family has been waiting longer for this than most Americans have been alive. That is either inspiring or depressing depending on your mood. Given that Republicans just passed the largest Medicaid cuts in history, probably go with depressing.
The American healthcare system spends more than any country on earth and delivers worse outcomes than most of its peers. It kills people who are afraid of the bill. It bankrupts families who did everything right. Thirty-five cents of every dollar goes to paperwork and profit. Healthcare CEOs make tens of millions of dollars annually to manage the machinery of denial. And the best argument against fixing it is that people might have to change their insurance card. The bar for acceptable suffering in this country is something else.
