WATCH: Elizabeth Warren Flatly Lies About Her Latest Health Care Plan
Massachusetts Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren made some big promises about her Medicare for All “transition plan,” but when that plan arrived Friday, those promises turned out to be lies.
Senator Warren’s national poll numbers have been in decline since people began pressing her for details on how she would fund Medicare for All, and she responded by releasing a funding plan two weeks ago. That plan included the promise of another plan — a “transition” plan — that Warren has been promising would include some pretty major items.
One of those promises was a plan for the 2 million jobs that Warren concedes will be eliminated by Medicare for All. In fact, two weeks ago, she erroneously claimed that she had already released a plan covering those displaced works, including a funding mechanism for “five-year transition support for everyone.”
Warren was campaigning in Iowa, and was asked where those 2 million people “go when private health insurance is eliminated?”
“So if you had a chance to read the plan, you’ll see, no one gets left behind. Some of the people currently working in health insurance will work in other parts of insurance, in life insurance and auto insurance, in car insurance. Some will work for Medicaid,” Warren replied, and went on to add “And there is a 5-year transition support for everyone. It’s right there in the plan, and it’s fully paid for.”
But Warren was referring to her transition plan, which had not been released at that point. “Transition support” is generally understood to mean full salary and benefits, plus job training, for transitioning workers. That’s what one of Warren’s outside advisers has suggested as part of the plan.
She made the claim again this week at a town hall in New Hampshire, as well as another, more outlandish promise for her transition plan.
Two women who work for the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services asked Warren for some details about her health care plan during a union town hall in Concorde. She told the first woman, Carol Healey, that under her plan “every doctor is covered. The specialist you need to see? They are all covered. The drugs you need? They’re all covered. So whatever your health care is, you got it. You’re covered.”
Later in the same event, a woman named Valerie pressed Warren on that claim, asking “if there’s Medicare for all, would all medical providers and facilities be required to accept it, or would they have the option to not take it, and require people to self-pay?”
Warren replied that “not all the transition’s been worked out yet, I’m going to have another plan on this, but where we are aiming on Medicare for All is every doctor is covered, every provider is covered, every health insurance company is covered, every prescription drug is covered.”
Valerie also asked Warren about the displaced workers, and Warren said her transition plan would cover that, including a funding mechanism.
“So what I’ve done on the proposal I’ve done, when I put the together the numbers on how to do this, it’s no one gets left behind,” Warren said. “Some people who currently do insurance will still do insurance, they’ll be doing life insurance, they’ll be doing auto insurance, other kinds of insurance. Other people will go to other parts of the health care system that will need it. Some of them will go to Medicaid, but nobody gets left behind.”
“And there’s money, because I always watch the money, you can count on me to watch the money, is that there’s money right in the plan for us to transition to Medicare for All so nobody loses a job and gets left behind,” Warren said.
But Warren released her “transition plan” on Friday, and neither of those provisions were included. There is nothing in the plan that would require every health care provider to participate in Medicare for All, and no provision that would guarantee every medical service and prescription would be covered. Medicare currently denies medical claims at a higher rate than private insurance companies.
And the only mention of displaced workers in Warren’s new plan is another vague promise of “assistance,” and a misleading claim that there’s funding for that assistance.
[T]he Medicare for All legislation includes billions of dollars to provide assistance to workers who may be affected by the transition to Medicare for All, and I plan on consulting with the new worker commission and other affected parties to ensure that money is spent as effectively as possible. In the past, transition assistance programs have been underfunded and have not been as responsive as they should have been to the actual needs of workers. That will not be the case in my administration. No worker will be left behind.
But the Medicare for All Act that Warren references, and which would not take effect for three years if Warren could manage to get it passed, does not include a funding mechanism for that assistance. It simply allocates “up to 1 percent” of the annual health care budget for up to five years of “temporary worker assistance.”
There are no “pay fors” in the legislation, and Warren’s funding plan did not account for this expense, either.
Watch the clip above, via ABC 13.