Senator
Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) unveiled a Medicare for all plan Friday that will cost nearly $52 trillion over the next ten years and, she claims, will not require any middle-class tax increases.The proposal would be funded by roughly $20 trillion in taxes on employers, financial transactions, and super-wealthy corporations over the next decade. Existing federal and state spending would account for the remaining $30 trillion in costs."We don’t need to raise taxes on the middle class by one penny to finance Medicare for All," Warren writes as part of the plan."When fully implemented, my approach to Medicare for All would mark one of the greatest federal expansions of middle class wealth in our history,” she continues. “And if Medicare for All can be financed without any new taxes on the middle class, and instead by asking giant corporations, the wealthy, and the well-connected to pay their fair share, that’s exactly what we should do."Warren would impose $9 trillion in new Medicare taxes on employers over the next decade, which she claims will replace what employers currently pay for employee health insurance.The plan includes a “Supplemental Employer Medicare Contribution” — another tax — on large corporations if the Medicare plan risks running out of funds.Warren also proposes more taxes on the super-rich in addition to her trademark wealth tax, which would raise another $1 trillion. Additional taxes on foreign earnings and financial transactions would also be implemented under the plan.Warren admitted on Tuesday that a universal medicare plan would eliminate about two million jobs, mostly among health-care-industry professionals, necessitating a plan to help those professionals adjust.“I think this is part of the cost issue and should be part of a cost plan,” Warren commented.Rival candidate Bernie Sanders has proposed his own universal medicare plan, which he projected would cost around $32 trillion over ten years. Sanders would fund the plan with taxes on wealthy Americans, although his wealth tax would only raise a comparative $4.35 trillion over ten years, along with other taxes on the middle class.Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg criticized medicare for all and Warren during last month’s
Democratic primary debate.“No plan has been laid out to explain how a multi-trillion-dollar hole in this Medicare-for-all plan that Senator Warren is putting forward is supposed to get filled in," Buttigieg said at the time.