Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wants Medicare for All back in the health care debate.
The former Congressional Progressive Caucus chair plans to present polling to her House Democratic colleagues next month as she argues for the electoral merits of Medicare for All — even in battleground districts the party must win to flip the House next fall. The research, paid for by Jayapal’s leadership PAC and shared first with POLITICO, found one in five Republicans support a “government-provided system,” as do most independents. Democrats back Medicare for All by 90 percent.
Two-thirds of voters said the federal government does “too little” to help people afford health care. Just 18 percent said the government does “too much.”
Jayapal’s Medicare for All push comes as Democrats have been largely unified on their health care messaging, pushing Republicans on the back foot about extending expiring Obamacare subsidies. Injecting Medicare for All back into the debate could also reopen a long-running intraparty fight that moderate Democrats aren’t keen to have.
In an interview, Jayapal described swing district voters’ openness to Medicare for All and a desire for “fundamental change” as a “significant shift” in recent years. She cited the rising costs of health care for making the current system less appealing to swing voters who “don't feel like they can afford health care right now” and “don't feel like they have a choice right now.”
“Whatever tropes they may have had about Medicare for all, those don't really exist today in the public's mind,” Jayapal said, arguing Democrats should now “put forward a very united and universal, comprehensive vision for health care in this country.”
Democrats are hoping to make health care a central midterm messaging — tying this fall’s federal government shutdown to a debate within the GOP over extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies. Jayapal hopes to nudge her party into not only pushing back on President Donald Trump’s cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA, but also “be ready with a proactive vision” for voters, she said.
Jayapal will undoubtedly face pushback from moderate Democrats over championing an issue that’s long divided the party. Medicare for All defined much of the ideological battle of the 2020 presidential primary, serving as the progressives’ flagship policy. After Joe Biden, who didn’t back it citing the price tag, won the primary, the policy largely fell out of the conversation.
Over the last five years, Medicare for All has remained popular among Democrats — and Jayapal argues her latest research shows that it’s increasingly intriguing to independents and Republicans, who are feeling the pinch of rising health care costs. Jayapal said she’ll pitch her polling to Republican members, too, though she declined to name them.
“There’s going to be some internal resistance [to Medicare for All] but it needs to be informed by polling, and in our survey, a majority of voters are in favor of it,” said David Walker, a pollster at GQR Research who conducted the survey. “We didn’t gild the lily [in the survey], we didn’t say it’d all be free.”
The poll described Medicare for All to participants as a “system [that] would still use the same doctors and hospitals as today, but take the profit motive out of health care by using a government-administered insurance system, like Medicare or Medicaid,” acknowledging “taxes will increase for many Americans,” but added, “those could be offset by not having to pay for health insurance premiums, co-pays or out-of-pocket costs.” The poll found 54 percent of voters nationally and 56 percent in battleground districts back Medicare for All.
Jaypal acknowledged confusion around the meaning of Medicare for All, and suggested adding “improved” to the slogan, as a nod to Americans’ frustrations with the existing Medicare program.
Jayapal said she intentionally used a polling firm that works closely with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee because “we wanted to make it clear this isn’t some fringe poll.” GQR surveyed 1,000 likely 2026 voters from Nov. 5 to Nov. 13, oversampling voters in battleground House seats. The margin of error is 3.1 percentage points.
