Elizabeth Warren Releases Plan To Pay For ‘Medicare For All’ Proposal, Avoiding Middle Class Tax Hikes
Elizabeth Warren has released her long-awaited plan to pay for her “Medicare for All” proposal, one that does not involve any tax hikes on the middle class.
The Massachusetts Senator had been coming under attack for her lack of details on how the program would be paid for, but on Friday, she responded with a detailed plan showing how the estimated $20.5 trillion program will be funded. Critics contended that her Medicare for All proposal would cost up to $34 trillion over the next decade, but Warren tapped a team of economists and health policy experts who came up with the lower estimate as well as a plan to pay for it.
As CNN reported, Warren’s plan seems to set her apart from fellow 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who released a proposal that called on new middle class taxes. Warren’s plan instead seeks to tax businesses and the wealthy, with a new tax on the net worth of billionaires.
Billionaires would be subjected to a tax of three cents on every dollar of net worth over $1 billion. This would be on top of the wealth tax that Warren proposed that would place a 3-percentage-point levy on billionaires, CNN noted. The wealthiest 1 percent would also be taxed on capital gains income each year, rather than at the time of sale.
Warren’s plan also empowers the IRS to crack down on tax evasion and fraud, with a focus on high-income earners. There would be a variety of other taxes, including an estimated $8.8 trillion collected from companies over 10 years in what she termed an “Employer Medicare Contribution.”
Warren’s plan would include a four-year transition from the current system to Medicare for All.
In a Medium post detailing the plan, Warren also called out her Democratic critics who have accused her of misleading voters on the costs of the plan or how it would be funded.
“Every candidate who opposes my long-term goal of Medicare for All should explain why the ‘choice’ of private insurance plans is more important than being able to choose the doctor that’s best for you without worrying about whether they are in-network or not,” Warren wrote. “Why it’s more important than being able to choose the right prescription drug for you without worrying about massive differences in copays. Why it’s more important than being able to choose to start a small business or choose the job you want without worrying about where your health care coverage will be coming from and how much it will cost.”
Warren released the plan amid a steady climb in the polls, challenging Joe Biden for his place as frontrunner in the 2020 race. As The Inquisitr noted, she has surged to the top of the pack in a recent poll of Iowa, with Biden falling to 4th.
