House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is more supportive of pursuing a single-payer health care system than she’s willing to publicly admit, deputy Democratic National Committee chair and Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison said in a video obtained by The Daily Caller.
“I believe in — I’m signed onto H.R. 676 which is a single-payer health care act. They call it Medicare for all. Yeah, universal health care. Real single-payer health care. I’m on that. But let me tell you this,” Ellison said at a local party meeting in Minnesota last Wednesday, partial video of which was obtained by TheDC.
Ellison asked if anybody was recording him before proceeding.
“Is anybody taping me right now? OK, so, you may have heard that Nancy [Pelosi] is not for it, but that’s not really true,” Ellison said. “Nancy has to represent a very diverse caucus. She does not like getting out ahead of the caucus too fast. So she’s trying to get, she’s, you know, you know, she actually likes the concept.”
“She’s trying to get, you know, you know, she actually likes the concept. She says it’s the best way to do it. She says it’s the cheapest way to do it, but she’s got to make sure that she brings our Blue Dog friends along,” Ellison added. “And by the way, for any of us progressives who get mad at the Blue Dogs, if we didn’t have them, some of them would be replaced by Republicans.”
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Pelosi, like other establishment Democrats, has been reluctant to make single-payer a plank in the 2018 platform.
“At a briefing with reporters last month, the House minority leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, replied with a flat ‘no’ when asked if Democrats should make single-payer a central theme in 2018,” The New York Times reported in June.
“The comfort level with the broader base of the American people is not there yet,” Pelosi said.
At a press conference in May, Pelosi said that she has long liked the idea of single-payer but isn’t supportive of it as a political option, again giving a firm “No” when asked if single-payer should be a plank of the Democrats’ 2018 platform.