Warren Presents Detailed ‘Medicare For All’ Road Map With Three-Year Transition Period

Reuters: Democrat Warren Outlines Three-Year Path To 'Medicare For All'
White House hopeful Elizabeth Warren on Friday outlined how she would implement "Medicare for All" during her first term in office, including by passing new legislation in her first 100 days that would give all Americans the option of choosing the government health insurance plan. Warren's timeline envisions a progression that would initially retain many aspects of the current system, including employer-based private insurance, while slowly transferring Americans to the government's Medicare health insurance plan that covers individuals 65 and older. (Becker and Ax, 11/15)

The New York Times: Elizabeth Warren Vows To Expand Health Coverage In First 100 Days
The initial bill she would seek to pass if elected would be a step short of the broader Medicare for all plan she has championed. But it would substantially expand the reach and generosity of public health insurance, creating a government plan that would offer free coverage to all American children and people earning less than double the federal poverty rate, or about $50,000 for a family of four, and that could be purchased by other Americans who want it. Ms. Warren has long endorsed a Medicare for all bill sponsored by one of her rivals for the Democratic nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. But until now, she has not specified how quickly she would move to enact a health care plan. Friday’s proposal amounts to a detailed road map for eventually establishing Medicare for all, a single government-run health insurance program under which private coverage would be eliminated. (Goodnough, Kaplan and Sanger-Katz, 11/15)

Politico Pro: Warren Details How She'd Transition Country To 'Medicare For All'
Warren vowed that by her third year in office she will push Congress to pass a bill fully implementing Medicare for All, an approach that seems designed to blunt attacks from Republicans and some Democrats that she would quickly strip people of their private health coverage. By the time the country moves to single-payer, she argues, tens of millions of people will have already had a taste of it. (Thompson and Ollstein, 11/15)

The Wall Street Journal: Warren Gives Timeline For Move To ‘Medicare-For-All’ System
The transition plan resembles buy-in proposals backed by other Democratic presidential contenders such as former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Like Mr. Biden, Ms. Warren, of Massachusetts, would also focus on shoring up and expanding the Affordable Care Act. It is also similar to the transition proposal outlined by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, another rival for the presidential nomination. His plan requires passing Medicare for All legislation that also includes a gradual shift into the program by reducing the age of eligibility for Medicare and covers children at no cost. (Armour, 11/15)

Boston Globe: Elizabeth Warren Lays Out Ambitious Four-Year Timeline To Transition To Medicare For All
The first step alone would require Warren to spend a significant amount of political capital on health care early in her term, even though she has outlined other issues, including ending the Senate filibuster, passing an anticorruption plan, and enacting a wealth tax as her initial priorities. (Bidgood, 11/15)

The Washington Post: Warren Tries To Sell Her Medicare-For-All Shift To Iowa Voters
Her new pitch also seems designed to assuage voters worried that her earlier approach would force 150 million people off their private insurance. Her ability to sell this new plan — and refocus her campaign on her larger message of reform — will be a key test for her candidacy. The toll on her campaign is particularly apparent here in Iowa, where a new poll by the Des Moines Register and CNN released Saturday night showed Warren in a three-way tie for second place with former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), while South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg surged ahead of the pack. The poll shows Buttigieg with 25 percent support and Warren, Biden and Sanders all with about 15 percent support. (Linskey, 11/16)

The Hill: Warren 'Fully Committed' To 'Medicare For All' 
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a 2020 White House hopeful, reportedly said Saturday that she remains “fully committed” to "Medicare for All" after her implementation plan drew criticism. “My commitment to Medicare for All is all the way,” Warren told reporters in Iowa, according to The Associated Press. She also defended provisions of her plan that call for building on existing health care programs before implementing Medicare for All because “people need help right now.” (Budryk, 11/17)

The New York Times: Elizabeth Warren’s Backup Backup Health Plan
The Democratic presidential candidates have been fighting over whether they should try to replace the health insurance system with a single government-run plan or create a government-run plan that Americans could choose to join. But hidden outside this big debate is a harsh reality: If Democrats fail to retake control of the Senate, neither plan has much of a chance to become law. ... So what would Warren do? Her regulatory agenda can be divided into a few broad categories. But over all, she views executive authority in the same broad way that Trump does. Several of her proposals are likely to end up in court — as several of his have. (Sanger-Katz, 11/16)

The Associated Press: Warren Pushes Back On Critics Of Her Health Care Plan
Elizabeth Warren pushed back against critics of her newly released plan to phase in implementation of a single-payer health care system, insisting Saturday that she is “fully committed” to Medicare for All and that she plans to first build on existing health care programs because “people need help right now.” “My commitment to Medicare for All is all the way,” Warren told reporters, responding to critics who’ve questioned the timing behind the release of her implementation plan. (Jaffe, 11/16)

The New York Times: How Elizabeth Warren Got To ‘Yes’ On Medicare For All
Two days before Senator Elizabeth Warren rolled out a fundamental reimagining of America’s health care and tax system — a $20.5 trillion package that would dwarf all her previous plans combined — she was working the phones to personally preview her proposal and sell it to a select group of political influencers. One was Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, who had written skeptically days earlier that her plan to pay for “Medicare for all” was a “make-or-break moment” for her, if not the whole 2020 race. Another call was to Representative Pramila Jayapal, the lead sponsor of Medicare for all legislation in the House and a leading liberal as the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Pramila,” Ms. Warren told her, “we’re gonna do this.” (Goldmacher, Kliff and Kaplan, 11/17)

The Washington Post: Obama Tells Democratic Candidates To Ease Off Talk Of Revolution
Former president Barack Obama on Friday urged Democrats running for the White House not to lurch too far left in their pursuit of the nomination, while at the same time seeking to quell concerns in the party about its 2020 hopefuls and the messy primary season to come. The comments — made in Washington at a meeting of the Democracy Alliance, a powerful network of liberal donors — marked some of Obama’s most pointed words yet about a fluid primary in which he is not picking sides. They echoed previous comments in which he warned about the dangers of pursuing purity and rigidity in politics. (Sullivan, 11/15)

Meanwhile, in other news on elections —

The Associated Press: Democrats Hold On To Louisiana Governor’s Seat Despite Trump
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has stunned Republicans again, narrowly winning a second term Saturday as the Deep South’s only Democratic governor and handing Donald Trump another gubernatorial loss this year. In the heart of Trump country, the moderate Edwards cobbled together enough cross-party support with his focus on bipartisan, state-specific issues to defeat Republican businessman Eddie Rispone, getting about 51% of the vote. ... Edwards expanded Louisiana's Medicaid program, lowering the state's uninsured rate below the national average. (Deslatte, 11/16)