House Debates Medicare, Rural WiFi, and Medical Industry Taxes in Final Full Session

The House of Representatives convened this Sunday in order to debate bills passed in smaller house committees, with purposes ranging from increased medicare access to WiFi in rural areas to taxes within the medical industry.

The first bill, the Medic-Access for Liberty and Liberation Act, or the Medic-ALL Act, which aimed to increase medical access through increasing income thresholds and age restrictions required to fall under Medicare. However, this bill failed with a 40-50 partisan vote, with almost every voter in opposition to the bill being a member of the Republican Party.

The second bill passed was the Broadband Expansion Grant, or the B.E.G Act, which outlines plans to implement WiFi into rural areas, as many still do not have access to the internet, limiting growth of businesses and communication. This would be done through commissions of broadband experts and grants to find this ambitious project. This bill passed with a slim 46-39 majority.

The final bill debated was the Decrease Research Expenses Act for Medical Expenditure Research, or D.R.E.A.M.E.R Act, which resulted in a passing of this bill with the support of both political parties, with a 80-5 majority vote within the House.

The first bill debated on the House of Representatives floor was the Medic-ALL Act. Authored by Jared Moskowitz, Cori Bush, Gregorio Casar, and Robert Garcia, explained that their motivations for this bill were to provide healthcare for all, as they desire to move America’s healthcare system to a place similar to Canada’s, a “country that cares.”

Medic-ALL works to increase healthcare access by widening the thresholds needed to qualify for healthcare. The bill does this through altering income brackets and age requirements. The act increases the income threshold needed for a citizen to qualfiy for Medicaid by 50%, and changed the qualfiying age from 65 to 45. Additionally, a citizen may qualify for Medicaid if they are disabled, chronically ill, or their condition is viewed as “exponentially and urgently serious.” The bill also provides stipulations for how these plans would have been promoted, through social media, television, and billboard campaigns, among other means.

However, the plans for funding immediately brought contention to the room. The authors established that funding would be sourced from increased taxes, particularly those who are higher income households. This sparked debate amongst the room, as many believed the rich should not need to fund a program which did not affect their lives, while others argued that the top 1% owned 90% of America’s income, and could spare a small increment of their money to grant a fundamental right to many Americans. The debate grew intense, with sentiments and speeches ranging from calling the bill “extremist” or attributing the bill’s creation to “woke elites.”

Contention over aspects of the bill continued as members of Congress disagreed over funding, threshold expansions being too extreme, and allegations of breaking an already broken system along with hypocrisy. However, the amount of legislation needed to be covered during the session combined with a late start forced the room to move to voting. Unfortunately, the bill failed, with a 40-50 split amongst the House. The vote was partisan, with almost all votes in favor of Medic-ALL from members of the Democratic Party, and only one vote from a Republican in favor.

The second bill, the B.E.G Act or Broadband Expansion Grant, was proposed to the House of Representatives by representatives from the House of Small Businesses. The term Broadband refers to WiFi networks stretching across rural areas. This is the problem trying to be solved: 42 million in rural states do not have access to broadband networks. This bill will enlist private companies to install broadband, putting a significant budget of 20 billion in grants.

Stated by one of the authors, “Think of funding as an investment in rural America, allowing businesses and workers to thrive.” The bill will create jobs where essentially 35% of workers building this infrastructure will be from these rural areas. It also hopes to allow those in rural areas to have access to platforms such as Etsy to sell their products on. Taxes can go into their communities, not cities throughout the country.

Delegates voiced their concerns about too much government oversight and too much funding, with many stating that there is no clear way about how this money is being used.

An Amendment was proposed,but failed as only 6 voted to amend the act. Another amendment was also presented, but failed as well. Delegates moved to previous question and The bill passed with a 46-39 vote.

The D.R.E.A.M.E.R (Decrease Research Expenses. Act for Medical Expenditure Research) increases competition in Medical R&D and incentivizes medicine as a career path in the U.S. by using taxes, and newly implemented federal scholarships. Authors of this act are Mike Turner, Jim Jordan, & Summer Lee.

Federal taxes put on the small business will decrease by 2.4% in order to allow small businesses a chance to compete against larger, more suitably funded companies. This will allow for small companies to no longer be marginalized by bigger companies, just because of lack of funding. Having local doctor’s offices will increase the ability for more communities to receive the medical attention they need, ultimately making healthcare more accessible throughout the nation.

In addition to this, this will issue an increase in federal taxes by 1% which enables the ability to increase the ability to research and develop better quality medicine. This is vital because it will improve the universal healthcare system, which many politicians saw as a “flawed system”.

Funds that are made from the increase in the federal tax will contribute to the new federal scholarship that will aid low-income scholars to be able to afford a medical career. The recipients of the scholarship will be decided by the newly made sub committee of the Department of Education, the “Federal Medical Scholarship Committee”. The scholarship will provide a full ride to students who go into low-paying specialties, such as primary care, family medicine, and pediatrics.

Despite this bill almost unanimously passing, there were concerns that the act will cause unnecessary issues, Representative Ro Khanna (CAL-17), one of the representatives who voted against this bill, had this to say “They want more students in the medical field, bu they wanted to make it competitive at the same time, when our entire goal is to get more people to go into the medical field and create more jobs.”

In response Representative Burlison, a member of the republican party, responded to Representative Khanna as follows, “Competitiveness for this program is absolutely necessary to get the absolute best students in the medical field right now. The doctor shortage and quality of doctors currently in the United States right now is so low, and we need to make sure that the scholarships are going to the most deserving people”.

As this act continues to solve current healthcare issues, such as the doctor shortage and poor quality healthcare, it will also provide better opportunities to the marginalized societies within the United States

This article was written by Kamila Ramirez, Alison Chavez, and Arya Khanna.