The Democratic candidates for president engaged in the same healthcare debate, with only minor differences, for the seventh time Tuesday evening.
The debate in Des Moines, Iowa, featured a lengthy exchange about the feasibility and wisdom of financing a Medicare for All plan favored by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, a topic that also dominated the past six Democratic debates.
Sanders said for the seventh time from a Democratic debate stage that his Medicare for All Act would lower costs for families, though he has yet to release a full funding plan.
“We save money, comprehensive healthcare, because we take on the greed and the profiteering and the administrative nightmare that currently exists in our dysfunctional system,” Sanders said.
Warren, too, has argued that families bear excessive burdens in the existing system when pressed about the cost of Medicare for All.
Warren and Sanders’s embrace of the sweeping healthcare proposal has provided more centrist rivals with opportunities to assail them for calling for too much taxes and spending.
“That’s doubling the entire federal budget per year,” Joe Biden said of the plan in Tuesday night’s debate. Medicare for All has been estimated to cost the federal government an additional $30 trillion or more over a decade.
Pete Buttigieg also brought up the issue of cost, saying his “Medicare for all who want it” plan would come to about $1.7 trillion — “no small fee,” but more a more manageable price tag.
Each of the seven debates has featured many of the same talking points from the candidates.
