Statements From Public Citizen Experts
Note: Today, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released her plan for paying for Medicare for All. She estimates total systemwide costs of around $52 trillion over the next decade, with most of the cost covered by existing funding. To cover the additional federal government spending, she is proposing a series of mechanisms, including an employer Medicare contribution, where companies would pay Medicare for All instead of insurers, which would save companies around $200 billion compared to current projected spending. She also proposed that states continue to help fund our health care system. Finally, there would be several additional tax reforms, including a tax on Wall Street trades, tax increases for wealthy individuals with more than $1 billion in total assets, closure of tax haven loopholes, tax enforcement improvements, cuts to military spending and savings from immigration reform efforts.
“While the cost argument against Medicare for All is almost always being made in bad faith by those who profit from our broken health care system, Warren shows that paying for Medicare for All through commonsense changes to how we pay for health care in America can work, while saving huge amounts of money. We can either continue spending wastefully and leaving tens of millions of Americans uninsured even more underinsured, and more than 100 million at the whim of employers and greedy insurance companies, or we can use that money to create a health care system that would improve Medicare and expand it to everyone in the U.S., and reap huge savings while improving the health and well-being of Americans for generations.”
– Lisa Gilbert, vice president of legislative affairs
“We applaud Warren’s plan to pay for Medicare for All. It highlights just how much we are wasting on our inefficient for-profit health care system and how much we could save through Medicare for All. Further, it shows that middle-class Americans are spending far too much while getting far too little, with tens of millions of Americans going without the care they need. Warren’s plan would bring down spending for families and businesses, which continue to struggle to complete because of the burden that health care places on their bottom line. Finally, the plan highlights that through progressive taxation mechanisms, we can pay for Medicare for All, which finally would guarantee access to health care for everyone in the U.S. without cost barriers.”
– Eagan Kemp, health care policy advocate
“Bloated and horribly wasteful at well over $700 billion every year, the nation’s Pentagon budget is begging to be reallocated to priority domestic and human needs. We are excited that Warren has identified needless and harmful Pentagon spending as a source of funds to pay for health care and look forward to her and other candidates’ additional proposals to shift money away from the Pentagon to meet the country’s urgent priorities.”
– Robert Weissman, president