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Senate Democrats are
distancing themselves from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
“Medicare for All” plan, casting doubt on whether it could pass even if she
does win the presidency.
Warren rolled out her
proposal for Medicare for All last week, instantly fanning the flames of a
raging debate among the Democratic presidential contenders over the idea.
But even if Warren wins
the presidency and Democrats take back the Senate next year, her proposal would
still face long odds of actually being enacted given objections among many
senators of her own party.
Some Democratic
senators on Tuesday said flatly that they would not vote for Warren’s plan if
she were president in 2021.
“No, I wouldn’t; I’ve
said consistently that I am not for Medicare for All,” said Sen. Doug Jones
(D-Ala.), who faces a tough reelection race next year. A victory by Jones would
greatly help Democrats reach a Senate majority.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said
“not as I understand it” when asked if he would vote for Warren’s plan.
The proposed
elimination of private insurance and its trillions of dollars in tax hikes are
prime reasons Democrats cite for rejecting her approach.
Many Democratic
senators said they prefer an optional government-run insurance plan, known as a
public option, more along the lines of what former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend,
Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg
are proposing.
“I’m not about to take
away private insurance from the union members who have worked so hard to
negotiate for it,” Menendez said.
The Medicare for All
legislation sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a
progressive rival to Warren for the Democratic presidential nomination, has
support from some Democratic senators, but most are not backing it. The bill
has 14 Democratic co-sponsors in addition to Sanders, out of 47 members of the
Senate Democratic Conference.
Democrats must win a
net gain of three seats and take the White House to gain the Senate majority in
2021, a high bar. If they do, they are expected to have a narrow majority,
where only a few Senate Democrats would be enough to kill ambitious liberal
proposals even if the party abolished the filibuster to allow measures to pass
without Republican support.
And it is not just a
handful of moderates who have concerns with Medicare for All, but many
mainstream Senate Democrats.
Asked if he would vote
for Warren’s plan in 2021, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) doubted
it would come up for a vote at all.
“I don’t know that
we’ll have a chance to do that; I think we’ll take up our own proposals,” he
said. “I’m for universal coverage, I’m for building on the Affordable Care Act.
My preference is to move forward on a public option.”
If Democrats controlled
the Senate, he added, “I think we would look to build on the Affordable Care
Act,” rather than pass Medicare for All.
Warren, a top-tier
candidate now seen as a favorite to win the Iowa caucuses, sought to address
concerns about Medicare for All on Friday by emphasizing that her $20.5
trillion plan would not include any middle-class tax increases. She said it
would instead be funded by redirecting what employers already pay for health
insurance and new taxes on the wealthy.
Warren and Sanders also
emphasize that Medicare for All would expand coverage to everyone and would
eliminate premiums and deductibles, providing much more generous coverage to
the millions of people who struggle with high out-of-pocket costs under the
current system.
Asked by a reporter in
Iowa on Monday how she would get Medicare for All through the Senate, Warren
said the election results would send a message.
“When I win, I will
turn around to all of my Democratic colleagues and say this is what I ran on,”
Warren said, according to a transcript provided by her campaign. “It’s there.
And that’s what the majority of the people in the United States said they
wanted.”
She acknowledged that
“there have to be compromises” in Congress. “But we’ve gotta come together
after this primary, we’ve gotta come together for the 2020 election,” she
added. “And then, we have to deliver what we run on.”
Some Democrats fear
that Medicare for All is a liability in the general election. An optional
government-run plan polled better than full-scale Medicare for All in a
September Kaiser Family Foundation survey, which found 69 percent support for
an optional plan and 52 percent support for the full-scale government plan.
“I line up with Joe
Biden. I want to make sure that the Affordable Care Act works,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), who
has endorsed Biden. “I supported a public option. I still do.”
Carper and Cardin both
declined to say definitively if they would vote “no” on full-scale Medicare for
All legislation if it came to a vote.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.)
objected to Medicare for All’s elimination of private insurance, saying there
need to be “reforms to the private health care marketplace” but that
“elimination of that option” is the wrong approach.
Medicare for All has
more support in the House, where about half of the Democratic caucus has signed
on to the leading bill.
But the top House
Democrat, Speaker Nancy Pelosi
(Calif.), raised concerns with the idea last week, telling Bloomberg, “I’m not
a big fan of Medicare for All.”
Some Democrats think it
is smarter for the party to focus on the winning message that helped the party
gain back the House last year and highlight Republican efforts to repeal the
Affordable Care Act. President Trump
is supporting a lawsuit to overturn the entire law that is currently making its
way through the courts.
“There are differences
on the Democratic side about how fast to get to universal coverage, but Trump
wants to take people’s health insurance away,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).
Cardin noted that a
Democratic president would certainly have some sway on which way the party goes
on health care, but that the ultimate decision would be up to Congress.
“That’s what’s great
about the American system, the independent branches of government,” he said.
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