Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is claiming she’ll pay for her ‘Medicare-for-all’ plan without raising taxes on the middle class. However, her funding plan, released on Nov. 1, projects a cost of almost $52 trillion to the tax payer over the next decade.
Warren says her plan will given everyone the chance to have affordable health care by asking the richest one percent of Americans to pay for it.
“It’s all fully paid for by asking the top 1 percent and giant corporations to pay a fair share,” Warren claimed.
Warren reiterated the claim on Twitter, while asserting she estimated she can return $11 trillion to American families.
Her proposal insists it can cover the cost with a combination of existing federal and state spending on health care—as well as taxes on employers, financial transactions, the ultra-wealthy, and large corporations. The plan also includes a payroll tax increase on employers, something economists say can hit workers by translating into reduced wages.
Warren’s campaign added that if they are at risk of falling short, they could impose a “supplemental employer medicare contribution” for big companies with “extremely high executive compensation and stock buyback rates.”
Additionally, the campaign claims they can scrounge up additional funds by reining in defense spending.
But some of warren’s rivals for the 2020 nomination are not buying her claim.
Former vice president Joe Biden’s deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, said, “The mathematical gymnastics in this plan are all geared towards hiding a simple truth … It’s impossible to pay for medicare for all without middle class tax increases.”
Kayleigh McEnany, press secretary for President Donald Trump’s campaign, reacted to the plan early Nov. 1, saying: “Elizabeth Warren just casually added an extra $20 trillion to Bernie’s government takeover of healthcare!!! Socialism outdoing socialism here folks.”
Study Says Funding Medicare-for-All With Taxes on Rich Is ‘Impossible’
A new study from a bipartisan budget watchdog said on Oct. 28 that it’s “impossible” to fund “Medicare-for-all” with taxes on the rich.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) said that there is simply “not enough annual income available among higher earners to finance the full cost of Medicare-for-All.”
“On a static basis, even increasing the top two income tax rates (applying to individuals making over $204,000 per year and couples making over $408,000 per year) to 100 percent would not raise $30 trillion over a decade,” it noted.
The organization also included an accompanying chart with the tax-the-rich option, listing it as “IMPOSSIBLE.”
It, however, found that the plan could be funded with a 32-percent payroll tax, a 25-percent income surtax, or a 42-percent value-added tax.
“A mandatory public premium averaging $7,500 per capita—the equivalent of $12,000 per individual not otherwise on public insurance” could also fund it, the study found. More than doubling corporate and income tax rates could also fund it.
Other ways include “an 80 percent reduction in non-health federal spending,” increasing the GDP national debt by 108 percent, or a combination of approaches.
“Impossibly high taxes on high earners, corporations, and the financial sector” would also fund it, the study said.
But the study warned all of the choices would pose serious consequences to the U.S. economy.
“Regardless of the impact on total national health expenditures, adopting Medicare for All would mean shifting virtually all private health costs to the federal government. Most independent estimates of Medicare for All find it would cost the federal government $25 trillion to $36 trillion over ten years,” the CRFB said.
“Deficit-financing ‘Medicare-for-All’ would be far more damaging to the economy,” the report stated.
“Assuming that such a massive increase in the debt would not roil financial markets or lead to high inflation, we estimate that a 108 percent of GDP increase in the federal debt would shrink the size of the economy by roughly 5 percent in 2030—the equivalent of a $4,500 reduction in per-person income—and far more in the following years.”
Epoch Times reporter Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
