Joe Biden’s presidential campaign launched an attack on Medicare for All Wednesday, calling the plan too expensive just hours before his second primary debate of the race.
“Let’s clear up the confusion about Medicare for All. We have the facts,” the Biden campaign wrote on Twitter alongside a video splicing together what are intended to be unflattering clips of his Democratic presidential rivals talking about how a single-payer health-care system would work.
The campaign said that Medicare for All would cost taxpayers between $30 and $40 trillion over ten years, would require raising taxes on the middle class, and would include no option for a patient to keep their current insurance plan.
“Of course it’ll raise middle-class taxes,” the Biden campaign said. “Joe Biden has a better plan.”
Biden’s plan, which his campaign claims would be more than 30 times cheaper than Medicare for All, involves building on the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration’s signature legislative accomplishment, and allowing people to choose a government insurance plan rather than requiring them to have one.
Some Democratic candidates have struggled to answer questions about how Medicare for All would work. Senator Kamala Harris has flip-flopped on whether the private health-insurance market would be eliminated. Senator Bernie Sanders, who wrote the Senate Medicare for All bill, has said the bill would raise taxes but that the middle class would end up paying less because they would spend less on health care overall.
During the first of this week’s two Democratic presidential debates Tuesday, some of the more moderate candidates accused rivals who support Medicare for All of promoting “wish-list economics.”
“We can go down the road that Senator Sanders and Senator Warren want to take us, which is with bad policies like Medicare for All, free everything, and impossible promises that will turn off independent voters and get Trump re-elected,” former Maryland congresssman John Delaney said.
“It’s disappointing to hear Democrats repeating lies from the health insurance industry to attack Medicare for All,” the Sanders campaign wrote Wednesday on Twitter.