Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Rivals, Some Experts Say Warren's 'Medicare For All' Plan Is Built On Optimistic Assumptions That Aren't Realistic
The New York Times: Billionaires Only? Warren Errs In Saying Whom Her Health Plan Would Tax
When Senator Elizabeth Warren laid out her plan for “Medicare for all” on Friday, she said she would raise taxes on the top 1 percent of households to help pay for it. The middle class, she said, would not pay “one penny” more. On Saturday night, Ms. Warren presented an even narrower description of who would face higher taxes under her plan. She told reporters that billionaires would be the only people to see their taxes go up — a misstatement of what she had proposed a day earlier. “It doesn’t raise taxes on anybody but billionaires,” Ms. Warren told reporters in Dubuque, Iowa, when asked what income bracket she defined as “middle class.” (Kaplan, 11/3)
The New York Times: Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Medicare For All’ Math
The Warren plan includes several key assumptions, including starkly lower prescription drug prices, minimal administrative spending and health care costs that grow at a significantly slower pace. Warren backers describe these cuts as ambitious and assertive, contending that the American health system — which has the highest prices in the developed world — could weather the change. Other health care experts call the ideas unrealistic, given the revenue that American doctors, hospitals and drug companies have become accustomed to earning. The key question in this debate is, how quickly can the United States tamp down its sky-high health care prices? (Sanger-Katz and Kliff, 11/1)
The New York Times: Warren Health Plan Tightens Democrats’ Embrace Of Tax Increases
Three years after President Trump rode a wave of populist anger into office, some of his top Democratic challengers are calling for a fundamental reordering of American capitalism, arguing that voters will embrace bold plans to reverse decades of rising inequality by raising taxes on corporations and the rich. The $20.5 trillion proposal for “Medicare for all” released by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on Friday is the most prominent example of how a party that once bet on centrist economic policies to win elections is moving toward far more ambitious efforts to redistribute wealth and expand the government’s role in the economy. (Tankersley, 11/2)
Boston Globe: Five Takeaways From Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare For All Plan
Moving every single American to a new health care plan is a massive endeavor, so much so that Warren says she’ll release an entirely separate plan that deals with how to handle the transition. The transition has become a sticking point in the Democratic primary, with moderates like former vice president Joe Biden using the lengthy time period (Sanders’ plan says it would take four years) as a reason to oppose it altogether. (Prignano, 11/1)
Vox: Elizabeth Warren’s Plan To Pay For Medicare-For-All, Explained
There’s wide variation in the quality of insurance employers purchase, and this plan has the consequence, at the outset, of punishing employers who purchased better insurance for their employees — now they’re paying more than stingier competitors, but without any recruiting benefit. Over time, Warren says she’ll adjust all employers to the same level, though the details of how that will work are sparse.There’s an even worse inequity for employers with fewer than 50 employees. They’re not required under law to provide health insurance, but a bit over half do. Warren’s plan says that small businesses “would be exempt from the Employer Medicare Contribution unless they are already paying for employee health care today.” (Klein, 11/1)
Bloomberg: Elizabeth Warren Finally Says How She'll Pay for Medicare for All
She’d bring in $2.3 trillion through stricter foreign tax compliance, instituting a country-by-country minimum tax on foreign earnings of 35% -- equal to a restored top corporate tax rate for U.S. firms -- and forbidding deferrals of those payments. She’d raise $400 billion by legalizing undocumented immigrants and requiring them to pay taxes. And she’d find $800 billion by scrapping the Overseas Contingency Operations fund, an accounting gimmick used by both parties to count unspent defense money as savings. (Kapur, 11/1)
Reuters: Warren's Big Healthcare Plan Relies On Big Assumptions
"The plan makes a lot of assumptions about how seamlessly this could be enacted and implemented," said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at Kaiser Family Foundation, adding that there was no precedent for such a large overhaul. Not only would medical businesses large and small resist decisions by the government to pay less for drugs and services, the plan could paradoxically underfund an expanded health insurance bureaucracy, said Linda Blumberg, an economist at the Urban Institute's Health Policy Center. (Lange and Becker, 11/1)
The Washington Post: How Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare-For-All Plan Would Work
Warren's plan adopts virtually in its entirety the vision for American health care set out by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in his Medicare-for-all legislation. It would place all Americans on a single government insurer, virtually eradicating more than 150 million private health insurance plans, while levying more than $15 trillion in new taxes on businesses and the rich to fund a generous and universal benefits package. Warren, who criticized “single-payer” as recently as 2012, had already embraced this part of Medicare-for-all in her 2020 presidential election bid. But unlike Sanders, she has now specified exactly how she envisions to pay for such a radical shift -- a move that could both earn her praise for precision but also open her up to new lines of attack. (Stein, 11/1)
The Associated Press: Biden Defends His 'Vision' Against Warren's Indirect Attacks
Bristling at Elizabeth Warren's suggestions that he's a milquetoast moderate with small ideas, presidential candidate Joe Biden countered Saturday that he offers a "bold" vision for the country and warned that Democratic primary voters should not get distracted by the party's increasingly tense battle over ideological labels. It was a departure from Biden's usual campaign speech and signaled perhaps a new phase of Democrats' search for a nominee to take on President Donald Trump, with Warren, the leading progressive candidate, and Biden, the top choice for most moderates and establishment liberals, ratcheting up the intensity three months ahead of the Iowa caucuses. (Barrow, 11/2)
Boston Globe: Now Facing A Two-Front Battle On Medicare For All, Elizabeth Warren Hits Back
Warren holds a slim lead here in the first caucus state, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll. But as the biggest weekend of Iowa’s fall campaign season drew to a close, it was clear she will have to fight a two-front battle to hold onto that lead, with Sanders showing a new willingness to knock her from the left and Biden and Buttigieg laying into her from their more moderate positions. (Bidgood, 11/3)
The Associated Press: How Warren And Sanders Pay For Medicare For All
Here's a look at Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's proposals to pay for Medicare for All and how they compare to financing options identified by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Both are running to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020. (11/1)
The Washington Post: Sanders, Warren, Seek To Clarify Their Differences
Sanders said his approach to funding Medicare-for-all, which includes raising taxes on middle-class families, is “far more progressive” than Warren’s method, a stinging comment calculated to solidify his role as the only pure progressive in the race. Sanders took issue specifically with Warren’s proposal that businesses would redirect their current health-care payments to the Medicare program, which Sanders said would hurt job growth. (Janes, Sullivan and Stanley-Becker, 11/3)
The Hill: Sanders Calls His 'Medicare For All' Funding Plan 'More Progressive' Than Warren's
“I think that that would probably have a very negative impact on creating those jobs, or providing wages, increased wages and benefits for those workers,” Sanders told ABC. “So I think we have a better way, which is a 7.5% payroll tax, which is far more I think progressive, because it’ll not impact employers of low wage workers but hit significantly employers of upper income people.” (Frazin, 11/3)
Reuters: Warren's Medicare For All Plan Attacked, Parodied By Republicans, Democrats And 'SNL' Show
Another Democratic presidential contender, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, said the plan's elimination of private insurance was too inflexible. "This my way or the highway idea, that either you're for kicking everybody off their private plans in four years or you're for business as usual, it's just not true," Buttigieg said on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday. (Timmons, 11/3)
The Hill: Buttigieg Knocks Warren On 'My Way Or The Highway' Health Care Plan
“The way I would do it, you get to keep your private plan if you want to,” he added. Buttigieg supports a “Medicare for all who want it” plan while Warren supports “Medicare for All.” The Massachusetts senator unveiled the details of her plan last week. Asked on Sunday about Medicare for All, which is also supported by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Buttigieg said he thinks it “could very well be the long-run destination.” (Frazin, 11/3)
Bloomberg: Nancy Pelosi Says She’s ‘Not A Big Fan’ Of Medicare For All
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said “health care for all,” rather than the Medicare for All proposal embraced by some leading Democratic presidential contenders, would be the wisest policy for the party as it seeks to defeat President Donald Trump in 2020. Pelosi, who helped push the Affordable Care Act through Congress in 2010, said in a Bloomberg Television interview Friday that Medicare for All would cost too much and that it’s clear many Americans don’t want to lose their private health insurance plans. (Litvan, 11/1)
The Washington Post: SNL Tackles Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare-For-All Plan In Cold Open
Kate McKinnon reprised her role as the Democratic presidential contender from Massachusetts, pacing back and forth on the stage in black pants, a black shirt and a bright red cardigan a la Warren. The setting was a mock town hall in Iowa, which hosted a fall fundraising dinner for the Democratic candidates on Friday and where Warren has recently emerged as the candidate to beat. With sleeves rolled up and brimming with energy, McKinnon’s Warren started by introducing herself — “Look at me, I’m in my natural habitat: a public school on a weekend” — then offered to “pour one out” for former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, who left the race Friday. (Hawkins, 11/3)
WBUR: Voters Weigh In As Elizabeth Warren Takes Health Care Plan On Campaign Trail
Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a plan to pay for "Medicare for All" without raising taxes on the middle class, and now she's on the campaign trail talking about it. (Khalid, 11/2)
CQ: 2020 Election Issues: Health Care
Health care remains at the top of voters’ priorities going into the 2020 presidential election, with Democrats hopeful they can replicate their 2018 strategy that helped win control of the House. Republicans are optimistic they will be able to benefit from Democratic Party divisions over “Medicare for All” government-run care and whether the party should embrace a single-payer health plan as a means of reaching universal coverage. (McIntire, 11/4)
CQ: Seven Major Issues Will Be Prominent In Voters' Minds In 2020
Democrats believe that health care will be a winner and most years, they’d be right. In most polls, health care and medical costs typically rate at the top of the list, and the party rode that issue to big wins in 2018. But the message has become muddied since then, when candidates mostly pledged to fight Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Now, there is an all-out war within the party pitting liberals pushing sweeping “Medicare for All” proposals and moderates urging more piecemeal solutions like the public option. Republicans believe they can exploit these rifts by arguing that Democratic proposals would lead to higher taxes, while workers could lose benefits from employers. (Miller, 11/4)
