Elizabeth Warren has posted her plan to pay for Medicare for All, and it's getting a pretty enthusiastic review
from Paul Krugman, who says it's a serious plan whose numbers -- though
you can argue about 'em -- add up. Democratic primary debates will
probably still start off with a mandatory 40 minutes dedicated to
bickering about whether we really want to provide health coverage for all Americans
or just for more Americans than we do now, plus some bad-faith
moderator questions that inject Republican fears of socialism into the
discussion.
But, according to Doktor Zoom at Wonkette, at least Warren has shifted the terms of the debate from
"she hasn't said how she'd pay for it" to "will this plan work?" Warren
even managed to put together a plan that doesn't call for new taxes on the middle class, although honestly, that's still a bullshit way of framing the debate.
As Krugman points out,
whatever the math, no plan to remake American healthcare more equitably
is going to be ready to go, out of the box, even if Warren gets
elected. The real crafting of a healthcare reform bill will happen
between the president and, let's hope, a new Democratic Congress. But
Warren's plan passes some basic tests for seriousness as a policy
proposal, says Krugman. It was drafted with the help of a bunch of
serious people like former Obama health policy honcho Don Berwick, who
headed the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Simon
Johnson, former chief economist at the World Bank, plus several other
real economists. Warren's detailed overview is accompanied by a pair of detailed appendices analyzing the numbers and economic assumptions in further detail.
Argue
all you want over the numbers, says Krugman, but they're there -- and
unlike every Republican plan of the last few decades, it doesn't depend
on waving a magic wand and chanting "magic of the marketplace."
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