Josh Nathan-Kazis
Aug. 1, 2019 9:10 am ET
After two nights of noisy Democratic debates,
one thing is clear: Health-care investors could be in for a few months more of
white knuckles.
In both the first debate
on Tuesday night, which featured Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth
Warren, and the second debate on Wednesday night, which included Sen. Kamala
Harris and Vice President Joe Biden, the clashes over the future of the health
care industry were among the most fiery.
The battle lines in Wednesday’s debate
echoed those laid down
on Tuesday, as moderates argued for a role for private insurers in
the managed-care business, while progressives pushed for a government-run
system that would eliminate the private health-insurance industry.
The debates made clear that the divide over
how Americans should pay for health care is the key issue splitting the
Democratic field. That means that arguments over Medicare for All could hold
the headlines until a Democratic presidential candidate is finally chosen next
spring.
Managed-care stocks have, in the past, reacted
violently to talk of Medicare for All. They tanked in April, after
Sanders reintroduced his Senate bill pushing the measure. The stocks have
stabilized since then, but investors should be ready for months of headlines
about proposals that, if realized, could wipe out much of the managed-care
industry.
Below, some highlights from both nights of the
debate.
Kamala Harris
Harris’s health plan, announced this
week, attempts to bridge the divide between the progressives and the
moderates. Harris would expand Medicare access to all Americans, but would
allow consumers to choose Medicare plans operated by private insurance
companies, as in the current Medicare Advantage program.
“I designed a plan where...there will be a
public plan, under my plan for Medicare, and a private plan, under my plan for
Medicare,” Harris said Wednesday.
Joe Biden
Biden, who supports
creating a public option but wouldn’t limit the role of private
companies, said Harris’s plan would be too expensive. “If you noticed, there is
no talk about the fact that the plan in 10 years will cost $3 trillion,” he
said. “You will lose your employer-based insurance.”
He also stood by his former boss’s signature
legislative victory. “Obamacare is working,” he said. “The way to build this
and get to it immediately is to build on Obamacare.”
Bill de Blasio
New York City Mayor de Blasio, a progressive,
pushed back on the idea that Americans want to keep their employer-based health
plans. “What I hear from union members and from hardworking, middle-class
people is they wish they had better insurance and they’re angry at private
insurance companies that skim all the profits off the top and make it
impossible for everyday people to get coverage like mental care,” de Blasio
said.
“I don’t understand why Democrats on this
stage are fear mongering about universal health care,” he added later. “It
makes no sense.” He later clarified that he was talking about Sen. Michael
Bennet.
Michael Bennet
Bennet, who represents Colorado, also backed a
public option, saying Democrats should “finish the job we started with”
Obamacare, and opposed the progressives who would limit the role of private
insurance companies. “As Joe Biden said, we don’t need that,” he said.
Kristen Gillibrand
The New York senator argued against
managed-care companies having a role in the health-care system. “I’m sorry,
they’re for-profit companies. They have an obligation to their shareholders.
They pay their CEO millions of dollars. They have to have quarterly profits,”
she said. “They have fat in the system that’s real and it should be going to
health care.”
Bernie Sanders
On Tuesday night, Sanders kicked off the
debate by defending his Medicare for All plan. In Canada, Sanders said, “they
guarantee health care to every man, woman and child as a human right. They
spend half of what we spend. And by the way, when you end up in a hospital in
Canada, you come out with no bill at all.”
John Delaney
Delaney, who is polling at less than 1%,
argued early in the Tuesday debate that consumers should be able to keep their
private insurance. “We can create a universal health care system to give
everyone basic health care for free,” he said. “But we don’t have to go around
and be the party of subtraction, and telling half the country, who has private
health insurance, that their health insurance is illegal.”
Elizabeth Warren
Warren, who, like Sanders, supports Medicare
for All, attacked private insurance companies on Tuesday. “The basic profit
model of an insurance company is taking as much money as you can in premiums
and pay out as little as possible in health-care coverage,” she said.
Pete Buttigieg
Buttigieg tried to carve out a middle path
Tuesday night, saying he was for “Medicare for All Who Want It.” He has
previously proposed offering a Medicare buy-in option for people not otherwise
eligible. “If people like me are right that the public alternative is going to
be not only more comprehensive, but more affordable than any of the corporate
options around there, we’ll see Americans walk away from the corporate options
into that Medicare option,” he said.
John Hickenlooper
Hickenlooper also backed a public option,
saying his plan “allows some form of Medicare” that is a “combination of
Medicare Advantage and Medicare.”
“It would be an evolution, not a revolution,”
he said.
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