Jeffries Says He Opposes Medicare for All — Which Would Save 114k Lives Yearly

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) has said that he now opposes Medicare for All, flipping on his previous stance just as Democrats are on the cusp of potentially winning back control of the House.

Medicare for All is “not legislation that I am currently cosponsoring or that I support,” Jeffries said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. Jeffries declined to say whether or not he would bring the legislation to a vote, though suggested that he wouldn’t, in the case that Democrats retake the House — which some pollsters say is a likely outcome.

This is a reversal of his stance from just a few years ago. Jeffries first announced that he was backing the legislation in 2019, and was listed as a cosponsor as recently as 2021. But he dropped off of the cosponsor list in 2023, after he succeeded Rep. Nancy Pelosi (California) to take the helm of House Democratic leader.

In the interview, Jeffries did not offer a different policy solution, but rather the vague promise that Democrats are “going to fight to make health care affordable for every single American,” he said.

Jeffries has often offered platitudes in the face of the health care crisis; last year, as Republicans were gutting the Affordable Care Act and kicking millions of Americans off of their health insurance, Jeffries simply said that, to push back, Democrats must “decisively address the Republican health care crisis because it is serious,” and that they must do so in a “bipartisan” way.

His latest statements came just days after Yale University and University of Maryland researchers released preprinted research finding that the universal single-payer health care system proposed under Medicare for All would prevent a whopping 114,000 deaths a year. At the same time, it would also save the U.S. over $1 trillion in health care costs annually, the study found — undercutting one of the biggest criticisms of the proposal.

Jeffries did not say why he has backed off his support for the legislation. But the tack to the right comes as he faces a new ascendant class of left-wing politicians taking over the Democratic Party, who are running on policy positions like abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), opposing the construction of data centers, and backing Medicare for All.

Unlike Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), Jeffries does not currently appear to be in danger of losing his position as head House Democrat. Still, he made several comments hostile to the left and left-wing priorities that could isolate incoming members of his own party.

In the interview, Jeffries said that he doesn’t support the Democratic Socialists of America’s policy agenda, and declined to say whether he believes that democratic socialists belong in the Democratic Party. He also declined to say if he would bring legislation on abolishing ICE to a vote if Democrats retake the House.

He instead said that he is “committed to dramatically reforming ICE” with proposals like unmasking ICE agents and ensuring they wear body cameras — though some places have already barred ICE agents from wearing masks, and the agency is already mandating the wearing of body cameras.

Jeffries has a history of hostility toward the left, and has continued to emphasize his opposition to more left-wing candidates for office. In June, after a slate of Zohran Mamdani-backed democratic socialist candidates swept House primary races in New York, Jeffries said that Mamdani has “work to do” in order to placate the more conservative wings of the Democratic Party.