Washington, D.C. – Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) released her long-awaited “Medicare for All” funding plan.
The plan also includes a ridiculous “calculator” that is more of a campaign ad than a tool for calculating costs. It is not worth the time we took to try it out, but we digress.
Warren’s plan will supposedly cost just under $52 trillion over ten years. She plans to fund it through trillions of dollars in taxes on employers, the wealthiest Americans, corporations, and financial transactions. The plan also requires targeted funding cuts and dips into existing healthcare funding at the state and federal level.
One of the biggest problems with the plan is what amounts to a payroll tax increase for employers. Employers will likely be forced to pass this tax increase on to employees in the form of reduced wages.
We find it highly unlikely Warren’s plan will spare the middle-class. Warren claims she “will not sign any legislation into law for which costs for middle-class families do not go down.”
If Warren sticks to this promise, she likely never gets to sign a single-payer healthcare program into law. Of course, if she does get the chance, we imagine she will break that promise and just pretend the middle class is not hurt.
Warren teased her plan for weeks but failed to deliver one that does not hurt the middle class. We expect her Democratic presidential primary opponents to continue pointing out her failure.