Pete Buttigieg’s campaign unveiled a plan for financing the candidate’s healthcare proposal, “Medicare for all who want it,” as scrutiny of his rival Elizabeth Warren’s healthcare proposal mounts.
To pay for the healthcare expansion, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor would reverse the corporate tax rate cut implemented by President Trump and congressional Republicans, raising the rate from 21% back up to 35% — the highest among developed nations. That, combined with his plan to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, would raise roughly $1.5 trillion over 10 years, his campaign told the Washington Examiner, enough to pay for the healthcare expansion.
Buttigieg mentioned his proposals for raising the funds Sunday in an appearance on Meet The Press, just six days after he put Warren in the hot seat during the presidential debate by questioning how she plans to fund her “Medicare for all” proposal.
“The bigger point here is my plan is paid for,” he said.
Warren has yet to explain how she would pay for “Medicare for all.” Speaking to an Iowa crowd over the weekend, she said that she would unveil her plan “over the next few weeks,” having worked on one “for months and months.”
Warren, who has avoided answering whether she will increase taxes on the middle class to pay for universal government-funded healthcare, will need to come up with significantly more money than Buttigieg. Analyses from the Urban Institute and the Commonwealth Fund found that “Medicare for all” would increase government healthcare spending by $34 trillion over 10 years.
[Read more: Sanders plan would mean billionaires taxed more than they earn]
