A group of Democratic lawmakers from the Pennsylvania House and Senate formally introduced the Pennsylvania Universal Healthcare Act at a press conference in the state Capitol on Monday.
House Bill 2763 and Senate Bill 1465 were introduced by state Reps. Greg Scott (D-Montgomery) and Lindsay Powell (D-Allegheny) and state Sen. Nikil Saval (D-Philadelphia) with a few days left in the current legislative session. Both bills still need to go through the legislative process in order to become law, but supporters see them as the beginning of a conversation to provide healthcare to all commonwealth residents.
The proposed legislation creates the Office of Health Care within the Pennsylvania Department of Health and tasks the new office with creating a single-payer healthcare system for all residents that would be funded through payroll taxes.
All Pennsylvania residents would be covered under the proposed system, and that includes people who are experiencing homelessness, people who are incarcerated, and undocumented immigrants. Nonresidents who work 20 hours a week in the commonwealth and pay Pennsylvania taxes would also be eligible.
“ This is the kind of legislation that I think we need to, and the kind of program that we need to adopt, and we need to see people rallying around at this very moment,” Saval said at Monday’s press conference. “This is what we ought to be doing right now, and if we’re unable to get this done in the session days that remain, we will take this up in the next session with a new legislature.”
