Warren Refers to Obama in Response to Biden’s Medicare for All Slam

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) addressed Joe Biden’s (D) critique of her Medicare for All plan, citing Obama in defense of her big government proposal and implying that the former vice president is repeating “Republican talking points”

Warren on Friday unveiled her Medicare for All plan, which does not require tax hikes for the middle class, she claims. Instead, she plans to fund the $52 trillion proposal by implementing additional taxes on the wealthy, pushing amnesty, and cutting defense spending.

Biden, who has stressed the importance of building on Obamacare’s foundation, reacted to Warren’s proposal through his deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield.

“For months, Elizabeth Warren has refused to say if her health care plan would raise taxes on the middle class, and now we know why: because it does,” Bedingfield said, according to the Hill.

“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,” she stated.

“To accomplish this sleight of hand, her proposal dramatically understates its cost, overstates its savings, inflates the revenue, and pretends that an employer payroll tax increase is something else,” she added:

There’s no two ways about it, we cannot defeat Donald Trump with double talk on health care — especially not about the impact and cost of a proposal to completely dismantle our health care system and eliminate employer-sponsored and all other private health insurance.

Warren responded to the Biden campaign’s critique, appealing to Obama and Obamacare as a defense.

She said:

The cost projections that we have on Medicare were authenticated by President Obama’s head of Medicare. Our revenue projections were authenticated by President Obama’s labor economist, and the employer contribution is already part of the Affordable Care Act that President Obama put into the Affordable Care Act.

“So if Joe Biden doesn’t want that, I’m just not sure where he’s going,” she continued. “We’re building on the Affordable Care Act.”

Warren pivoted, implying that Biden is guilty of repeating “Republican talking points.” Warren said:

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.

“If anyone wants to defend keeping those high profits for insurance companies and those high profits for drug companies and not making the top one percent pay a fair share in taxes and not making corporations pay a fair share in taxes, then I think they’re running in the wrong presidential primary,” she added.