Front-Runner Sanders Left To Fend Off Attacks Over ‘Medicare For All’ Math, Gun Votes At Latest Debate

Reuters: At Rowdy Debate, Democratic Rivals Warn Sanders Nomination Would Be 'Catastrophe'
Democratic presidential candidates unleashed withering attacks on Bernie Sanders in a boisterous debate in South Carolina on Tuesday, assailing his ambitious economic agenda and warning his nomination would be a "catastrophe" that would cost Democrats the White House and control of Congress. In a debate that featured candidates repeatedly shouting over one another and ignoring their time limits, Sanders' opponents united in attacking the self-avowed democratic socialist as a risky choice to face Republican President Donald Trump in November. ... Pete Buttigieg, the moderate former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, criticized Sanders for the shifting estimates on the costs of his proposals such as government-run healthcare and warned that the front-runner would bring about chaos. (Renshaw and Hunnicutt, 2/26)

The Washington Post: Democrats Gang Up On Sen. Bernie Sanders In South Carolina Presidential Debate
“Bernie is winning right now because the Democratic Party is a progressive party and progressive ideas are popular ideas even if there are a lot of people in this stage we don’t want to say so,” Warren said. “Bernie and I agree on a lot of things, but I think I would make a better president than Bernie,” Warren added, saying that she focuses on details. Using health care as an example, she pointed out that she tried to fill in gaps in Sanders’s Medicare-for-all plan. “I dug in, I did the work, and then Bernie’s team trashed me for it,” Warren said. (Viser, Linskey, Sullivan and Wootson, 2/26)

The Wall Street Journal: Democratic Debate In South Carolina: The Moments That Mattered
Sanders stood in the center of the stage for the first time this election, underscoring his front-runner status. He certainly earned front-runner scrutiny. “No, the math does not add up,” Ms. Klobuchar said to Mr. Sanders, saying that his Medicare for All proposal was too expensive. She also said that Democratic Party elders, including former President Obama, had opposed his idea for expansive government proposals. “They are not with you,” she said. He also took heat for his votes against the 1993 Brady Bill, which established mandatory background checks, while Mr. Sanders was a member of the House. Mr. Sanders called it a bad vote. (Jamerson, 2/25)

The Wall Street Journal: Rivals Focus On Sanders At South Carolina Debate
The urgency of the moment—days ahead of the South Carolina primary and a week from the delegate-rich Super Tuesday contests—was clear as the candidates jockeyed for airtime by interrupting, insulting and provoking one another, often speaking over their time limits and their rival candidates. Mr. Sanders, coming off his resounding win in Nevada last week that cemented him as the front-runner, heightened the stakes for the others on the stage. (Collins, Day and Glazer, 2/26)

The New York Times: Fact-Checking The Democratic Debate In South Carolina
WHAT MR. SANDERS: “What every study out there, conservative or progressive says: ‘Medicare for all’ will save money.” False. There have been several analyses of Mr. Sanders’s Medicare for all health care proposal, which would provide every American with generous government-funded health insurance benefits. Those studies have shown a range of potential costs, including several that estimate that the plan would cost substantially more than what the country would otherwise spend on health care.Mr. Sanders is correct that a recent study published in the medical journal The Lancet showed that his plan would cost $450 billion less in a year than the current health care system. But that study made several assumptions that other economists who have examined the plan have considered unrealistic. Other studies have shown that spending would increase as the plan expands coverage to more Americans, and provides them with expensive new benefits, like long-term care, which few health insurance plans currently cover. This article provides an overview of a few of these studies. (2/25)

Kaiser Health News: Bernie Sanders Embraces A New Study That Lowers ‘Medicare For All’s’ Price Tag, But Skepticism Abounds
Largely, the Lancet paper is more generous in its assumptions than other Medicare for All analysis, noted Jodi Liu, an economist at the Rand Corp., who studies single-payer plans. To the researchers’ credit, she said, they acknowledge that their findings are based on uncertain assumptions. For instance, the researchers calculate $78.2 billion in savings from providing primary care to uninsured people — $70.4 billion from avoided hospitalizations and $7.8 from avoided emergency room visits. But previous evidence suggests that the logic is suspect at best. (Luthra, 2/26)

The Washington Post: Fact-Checking The 10th Democratic Primary Debate
In any case, one study — or even many — can not easily estimate the impact of overhauling one-sixth of the U.S. economy. Sanders has put out a menu of possible options for how to fund Medicare-for-all, though many experts says that he still falls short. One option would require a 7.5 percent payroll tax that employers would pay to help fund the program. Virtually every economist will tell you that a payroll tax paid by an employer largely comes out of the pay earned by the employee, but Sanders argues that the savings on the premiums currently paid by the employer should result in an overall reduction in costs for the employer. He estimates that a company would save more than $9,000 in health-care costs per average employee, but those claims must be viewed with skepticism. (Kessler, Rizzo and Kelly, 2/25)

Politico: A Bernie Slayer Fails To Emerge At Tuesday's Debate
Sanders has glided through a year of campaigning churning out enormously ambitious and expensive federal policy proposals with little regard to the costs. The total now is estimated to be $60 trillion. When the pressure to cough up some more numbers increased this week, his campaign put out a list of pay-fors that did not come close to matching the scale of his spending. For instance, he identified less than $18 trillion in revenue for his Medicare For All plan, which he estimates will cost $30 trillion and outside estimates peg at much higher. (Lizza, 2/26)

The New York Times: Amid Insults And Interruptions, Sanders Absorbs Burst Of Attacks In Debate
Mr. Biden, fighting for survival in the state on which he has staked his candidacy, delivered perhaps the most searing critique of Mr. Sanders, invoking the 2015 church massacre here in Charleston to confront Mr. Sanders for his mixed record on guns. “Nine people shot dead by a white supremacist,” Mr. Biden said, then rebuked Mr. Sanders for his past opposition to waiting periods for gun purchases: “I’m not saying he’s responsible for the nine deaths, but that man would not have been able to get that weapon if the waiting period had been what I suggest.” (Martin and Burns, 2/25)

The Associated Press Fact Check: Dems Implore Fact Checkers To Back Them Up
JOE BIDEN: “A hundred and fifty million people have been killed since 2007, when Bernie voted to exempt the gun manufacturers from liability.” THE FACTS: Biden vastly overstated gun deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports about 413,000 gun deaths from 2007 to 2018, a far cry from 150 million, which equates to close to half the U.S. population. More than half of the gun deaths in 2018 were from suicide, says the CDC. His campaign acknowledged he misspoke. (2/25)

Los Angeles Times: 5 Takeaways From The South Carolina Democratic Debate
Sharing her own story of being discriminated against as a pregnant teacher, Warren reduced the former New York City mayor to sputtering outrage. “At least I didn’t have a boss who said to me, ‘Kill it,’ the way that Mayor Bloomberg is alleged to have said to one of his pregnant employees,” she said. He categorically denied ever making the statement. But the strategy lost a bit of its oomph, lacking the surprise factor and dampened by boos from the Bloomberg-friendly crowd. (Barabak and Mason, 2/25)

Kaiser Health News: Democrats Sharpen Health Care Attacks As Primaries Heat Up
The ideal began to get real on Tuesday, as seven of the top contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination sparred over the price tag on health care reform and even revealed similarities on issues like marijuana legalization. With Democrats in 15 states and American Samoa set to cast their primary votes in the next week, the candidates eagerly seized their chances on the debate stage in Charleston, S.C., to jab Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the current frontrunner, during the party’s tenth debate. (Huetteman, Luthra and Knight, 2/26)

The New York Times: The Basics Of ‘Medicare For All’
It’s possible you’ve tuned out when the Democrats running for president have tussled over “Medicare for all.” But now that Bernie Sanders, who introduced the Medicare for All Act in the Senate, is ascending in the nominating contest, it’s a good time to take a closer look at what it would mean for the health system, your health insurance and finances, and the federal budget. Here’s our quick primer, with some suggestions for further reading. (Sanger-Katz, 2/25)

The Associated Press: Medical Report Shows Klobuchar In 'Very Good Health'
Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar is “in very good health,” according to a medical report the Minnesota senator's campaign released days after she said during a debate over Bernie Sanders' health records that “you should release your records from your physical.” Klobuchar, who is trailing Sanders and most of her other rivals ahead of Tuesday night's debate in South Carolina, released a four-page report late Monday based on a January routine physical and medical records. (2/25)

Kaiser Health News: Past As Prologue: Questioning Buttigieg’s Claim About Keeping Your Health Care
As the Democratic presidential campaign moves to the battleground of South Carolina this weekend, candidate Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is highlighting his health plan as he seeks to slow the momentum of the front-runner, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. In a video ad airing across the state, Buttigieg argues that his health plan — called “Medicare for All Who Want It” — offers Americans their choice of insurance plans, in a way he says Sanders’ more sweeping “Medicare for All” plan does not. (Luthra, 2/25)