House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) expressed her uncomfortable relationship with Medicare for All during an interview with Bloomberg Television on Friday, stating that she is in favor of “healthcare for all” and warning Democrat candidates to “remember November.”
In an interview with Bloomberg Television on Friday, Pelosi expressed a hesitancy to embrace Medicare for All– a proposal embraced by two of the top tier candidates in the Democrat primary field.
“I’m not a big fan of Medicare for All,” Pelosi said, according to Bloomberg. “I welcome the debate. I think that we should have health care for all. I think the affordable care benefit is better than the Medicare benefit.”
“Remember November,” Pelosi added.
Pelosi’s warning coincides with the release of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) $52 trillion Medicare for All proposal, which she says she will pay for with defense spending cuts, tax hikes on the wealthy, and amnesty.
She details her plan in a Medium post, which features a Medicare for All calculator, helping voters to “find out what Elizabeth’s plan for Medicare for All will mean for you.”
It asks, “Where do you get your health care right now?”
If the user indicates that he or she does not currently have coverage, her calculator states, “You’d get complete health care coverage under Medicare for All!” touting it as “practically free health care for you and anyone else who needs it.”
Democrats, including Joe Biden (D), Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), and John Delaney (D), have slammed her proposal, describing it as unrealistic.
“Voters are sick and tired of politicians promising them things that they know they can’t deliver,” Bennet said in a statement. “Warren’s new numbers are simply not believable and have been contradicted by experts.”
“I was the first person to point out the flaws of Medicare4all and I’m the only one with a real universal healthcare plan that works. @ewarren numbers don’t add up and the ‘public options’ Dems don’t go far enough,” Delaney wrote.
“The mathematical gymnastics in this plan are all geared towards hiding a simple truth from voters: It’s impossible to pay for ‘Medicare for all’ without middle class tax increases,” Biden’s deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield stated.
Warren defended her proposal against Biden’s critiques on Friday, claiming that the estimates are backed by Obama-era experts and implying that the Biden campaign is repeating “Republican talking points.”
“Democrats are not going to win by repeating Republican talking points and by dusting off the points of view of the giant insurance companies and the giant drug companies who don’t want to see any change in the law that will bite into their profits,” Warren stated.
She challenged those who want to “defend keeping those high profits for insurance companies and those high profits for drug companies,” suggesting they are “running in the wrong presidential primary.”