Ady Barkan on Elizabeth Warren's new plan to pay for Medicare for All
Elizabeth Warren today unveiled a plan to cover 331 million people in the United States through Medicare without raising taxes on the middle class. The plan would also save people $11 trillion over ten years, by eliminating co-pays, deductibles and premiums. It would expand her wealth tax, cut defense spending, and otherwise raise the money it would take to cover everybody, while cutting health care costs. Ady Barkan, one of the nation’s leading advocates for Medicare for All, has a column in The Intercept today applauding the plan.
This is something of a moment-of-truth for the single-payer movement, which surged into the national conversation as part of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 run for president. It’s the furthest along it has ever advanced, and it’s now at a level of detail that it can be picked apart piece-by-piece, and framed as a “20 trillion dollar tax hike” which will throw you off your beloved private insurance. Noticeably, in Warren’s plan, she repeatedly refers to her “long-term goal of Medicare for All,” which appears to be a way to ease people into it and assuage fears that there will be some massive shock to the system. The next few weeks and months will be critical for how this unfolds.
Here’s the NYT on the plan, and here’s Ady’s story.
And organized labor is tip-toeing into the insurgency. Fun story here from Rachel Cohen.
(Any typos in this email were my fault, not my Great Aunt Mimi’s; I didn’t bug her to edit it since it’s short and early in the morning. She’s a night owl.)