Warren:wealthyto pay forcoverage
WASHINGTON — Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Friday proposed $20.5 trillion in new spending through huge tax increases on businesses and wealthy Americans to pay for “Medicare for All,” laying out details that will pose political risks for her presidential candidacy while also allowing her to say she is not raising taxes on the middle class to pay for her health care plan.
Warren has been under pressure from top rivals to release details about paying for her biggest plan, Medicare for All. Her new proposal marks a turning point for her campaign, in which she will have to sell voters on a huge tax-and-spending plan that rivals the ambitions of the New Deal and the Great Society.
Under Warren’s plan, employer-sponsored health insurance — which more than half of Americans now receive — would be eliminated and replaced by free government health coverage for all, a fundamental shift from a market-driven system that has defined health care in the United States for decades.
Warren would pay for the $20.5 trillion in new federal spending through a mix of sources, including by requiring employers to pay trillions of dollars to the government, replacing much of what they currently spend to provide health coverage to workers. She would create a tax on financial transactions like stock trades, change how investment gains are taxed for the top 1% of households and ramp up her signature wealth tax proposal to be steeper on billionaires.
Thomas Kaplan, Abby Goodnough and Margot Sanger-Katz are New York Times writers.