Two hours before Sunday’s Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders released a single-payer healthcare plan, paid for by higher taxes. Hillary Clinton suggests basing universal healthcare on Obamacare.
Bernie Sanders Sunday night released details for a single-payer “Medicare for all” healthcare plan that would move healthcare from employer-based plans to one that expands the federal system to cover all Americans. It would also eliminate co-pays and deductibles, and be paid for through higher taxes, the AP reported tonight.
“Universal health care is an idea that has been supported in the United States by Democratic presidents going back to Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman,” Sanders said in a statement. “It is time for our country to join every other major industrialized nation on earth and guarantee health care to all citizens as a right, not a privilege.”
The AP adds that the Sanders campaign “said the plan would cost $1.38 trillion a year, but would save $6 trillion over the next decade compared to the current health care system, citing an analysis by Gerald Friedman, an economist at University of Massachusetts at Amherst.”
But much of the cost would be paid for through a 6.2 percent payroll tax paid by employers and a 2.2 percent “health care premium” on workers. It also relies on taxing capital gains and dividends on families earning more than $250,000 a year, eliminate deductions for wealthy Americans and raising the estate tax.
Sanders during the first question of tonight’s debate, and again at least one other time in the first half-hour, mentioned his plan as an effort that he would prioritize in his first 100 days.
Hillary Clinton during the debate said she is “absolutely committed” to universal healthcare, but that “details really matter.” She added, “I want us to defend and build on the Affordable Care Act and improve it.”
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Image: Screenshot via NBC News/YouTube