Elizabeth Warren’s Democratic rivals are putting pressure on her campaign to explain the extent of her support for “Medicare for All” and to detail whether she would accept any alternatives as president.
Warren, a Massachusetts senator, declared on the debate stage in June that she was “with Bernie on Medicare for All,” referring to Bernie Sanders, the the longtime champion of “Medicare for All,” which would enroll everyone living in the U.S. into a government plan and abolish nearly all private health insurance.
Over the years, however, she has waffled on the issue and in Congress she has signed onto other, less-sweeping plans, raising the possibility that she might be more willing than Sanders to endorse a less comprehensive overhaul of the healthcare system.
It’s not clear yet whether Warren would back off from “Medicare for All” if she were to become the Democratic nominee. It’s a potentially crucial issue between the 2020 Democratic rivals, who are staking claims to the far-left flank of the Democratic electorate.
Though a majority of polls show Joe Biden leading the Democratic primary race, combined support from Warren and Sanders outweighs Biden’s. And Medicare for All offers both candidates opportunities to differentiate themselves on a key policy issue from Biden, who favors expanding the Affordable Care Act — or Obamacare — which is based on private insurance markets.
“It doesn’t seem like much daylight between what [Warren] is saying and what Sanders is saying in terms of supporting ‘Medicare for All’ as the policy prescription for what they think we ultimately need,” said Wendell Potter, president of Business for Medicare for All.
But Warren’s support for setting up a single, government healthcare system hasn’t always been unwavering.
As recently as this year, she re-introduced a bill that would bring more health insurers into Obamacare and co-sponsored legislation that would allow states to let their residents buy into Medicaid, a government program that covers the poor.
She appeared to support a fully government financed healthcare system in her 2008 book Get Sick, Go Broke. But then when she was running for Senate in 2012 she said in a media interview that she didn’t support it, noting she hadn’t authored the book alone. Instead, she said it was important to move in the direction of getting more people covered and lowering the cost of healthcare. Throughout that campaign she stressed the need to protect Obamacare.
And while Warren has said she favors abolishing private health insurance, she also has chosen her words carefully during debates. In September, she suggested Medicare for All was the “best way” that “everybody gets covered by health care at the lowest possible cost.” She didn’t declare it as the only way to help get to universal coverage, nor did she bash other ideas from rivals such as Biden that would preserve private health insurance but also allow more people the option to buy into a government plan.
One of Warren’s taglines for the Democratic primary is that she “has a plan for that,” referring to the fact that she has released a multitude of detailed policy proposals, from universal childcare to universal free public college, which would be funded through a wealth tax.
But on healthcare, which is shaping up to be one of the largest issues for voters in the 2020 election, Warren has not released a detailed proposal and instead has piggybacked off the Sanders plan. The Warren campaign did not respond to detailed questions about her approach to healthcare.
The lack of details is irking some of her rivals. Fellow Medicare for All Act co-sponsor Sen. Kamala Harris, for instance, was under pressure to release her healthcare proposal this year after she went back and forth over whether she supported keeping private health insurers in business.
“Everyone has a plan for something, right?” Harris said this week during an MSNBC town hall, issuing a veiled dig at Warren’s slogan.
Warren’s momentum in the race has been attributed, in part, to her steady roll-out of plans, cementing her place in the field’s top-tier. Warren has closed in on Biden, attracting on average 24% of the vote to his 26.2%, according to RealClearPolitics data. Simultaneously, she has posted impressive third financial quarter numbers, hauling in $24.6 million over the summer. Sanders leads the pack, raising $25.3 million during the same time period.
Aides for other rival Democratic campaigns, who declined to be named in order to speak candidly, raised problems with Warren’s vague healthcare platform.
“I’m not sure if anyone really knows where Elizabeth Warren stands on healthcare, but I hope that whatever plan she settles on will cover the whiplash voters have from trying to keep up with her shifting positions,” one told the Washington Examiner via email. “For the candidate that ‘has a plan’ for everything, it’s a bit ironic that Warren won’t be straightforward with voters about what her approach will mean for their health care, and how she’s going to raise their taxes to pay for it.”
Said another campaign in a phone interview: “It seemed like she was very unabashedly supportive of ‘Medicare for All’ for a long time, or at least the Bernie plan, and she still is, but last week on the campaign trail she called it a framework instead of a plan in response to a voter’s question. It does seem like she’s trying to back away from it a little bit or at least leave herself with more options.”
Not all candidates who support the Medicare for All Act see it as the only way to end uninsurance in America. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, a co-sponsor of the bill, has also signed onto several other healthcare bills and said he would be open to incremental approaches. In addition to voting for Obamacare in 2010, Sanders has co-sponsored other measures to expand Obamacare or let people buy into a public plan in previous Congresses — though, conspicuously, not this one.
In 2015, Warren co-sponsored a bill to add a public option, and in 2017 she signed onto proposed legislation that would cap what people pay for premiums, another that would help more young people get coverage, and a third that would create a public health insurance option through the exchanges.
In elections, politicians often avoid sharing specifics on policy in order to keep their critics at bay. A plan from Warren that looks very similar to the Medicare for All Act would open her up to criticisms from Democrat rivals and Republicans that her ideas are too disruptive and expensive, while presenting a more incremental approach carries another political risks: one in which she will be attacked as uncommitted to her promises and opportunistic in trying to win over Sanders voters.
Supporters of “Medicare for All,” however, are also contending with the fact that polling shows people like the way the proposal is phrased but are nervous about its details. Support goes down when voters learn taxes would go up and that private health insurance would be razed.
It’s not clear that the most vociferous defenders of “Medicare for All” will support a candidate who favors a gradual approach. National Nurses United, which is among the groups boosting government-financed healthcare and that has appeared alongside Sanders for bill introductions, supports the House legislation, which has an even shorter timeline for implementation, of two years instead of four. The group declined to comment for this article.
Potter, whose organization Business for Medicare for All has not endorsed a candidate, said it would be “disappointing” if Warren were to back off her full-throated support of “Medicare for All.” He sees the problem of the U.S. healthcare system as going beyond the 30 million uninsured, and seeks instead to show voters that they are paying more for their healthcare every year under private plans, and that their coverage has become less valuable.
Potter said he thought policies to let people buy into a government plan or to add regulations to insurers should be part of an overarching Medicare for All Act, and not passed as separate legislation. He pointed out that it had been 10 years since the passage of Obamacare and that some Democrats believed expanding on that law was adequate.
“It seems like every 10 or 15 years you have public opinion around sweeping change, but political realities make it difficult,” he said.
