She claims “I’ve got a plan for that” on just about every issue, but the proverbial cat got Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s tongue on health care. And you can bet that’s Warren’s plan.
Rather than answering tough questions about the single-payer health care scheme she now endorses, Warren wants to keep the focus on 1) bashing insurance companies and 2) telling people they will receive great health care under socialized medicine. Telling people they will lose their current coverage, and figuring out how to pay for this $30 trillion-plus system? Warren doesn’t want to bother answering questions about those minor details.
Subdued Launch for Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Plan’
Just prior to last week’s Democratic primary debate, Warren released her “plan” on her campaign website. But you wouldn’t know it from the lack of press coverage. And you wouldn’t know that her website verbiage counts as a true “plan” from its substance—really, the lack of substance.
First off, the health-care page of Warren’s website logs in at 1,115 words for a health care system on which our nation spends more than $3.5 trillion per year. By comparison, Joe Biden’s health care platform clocks in at nearly 3,302 words, or three times as long. Warren’s “plan” is 25 words longer than Donald Trump’s campaign health care platform, released in March 2016 and derided by some as having “the look and feel of something that a 22-year-old congressional staffer would write for a backbencher based on a cursory review of Wikipedia.” Yet, ironically enough, Trump’s campaign platform contained more concrete proposals than Warren’s does.
Warren’s “plan” does include specifics on prescription drug prices, mental health, the opioid epidemic, and access to care in rural communities. But on the biggest issue of the campaign—the millions of people who cannot afford health coverage because Obamacare priced them out of the marketplace, and the left’s big government “solutions” to a problem government created—Warren talks much, but says precious little.
The heart of Warren’s health care “plan” starts with two paragraphs about Warren’s life story. It continues by bashing Republicans’ attempts to “sabotage” Obamacare and insurance companies. It then states as fact that single payer “solves these problems. Everyone can see the doctor they need. Nobody goes broke.”
That’s pretty much it. Among the issues the campaign “plan” didn’t answer: Who will pay for all of this? What will doctors and hospitals get paid? What if I like my private insurance—or I just don’t want the government interfering in my health care?
Apparently, the Warren campaign is looking to reduce its carbon footprint by converting to veganism. If you’re looking for any meat in this health care “plan,” good luck finding it.
Trying to Avoid History’s Mistakes
Why might Warren, who prides herself on her supposed love of wonkish details in every other issue area, suddenly become so taciturn on health care? Perhaps a video can illustrate:
If that infamous broken promise by Barack Obama—PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” for 2013—didn’t provide enough illustration, there are also his promises that Obamacare would 1) allow people to keep their doctor, 2) cut premiums by $2,500 per family per year, 3) not result in a middle-class tax increase, and 4) feature negotiations on C-SPAN, “so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”
Want to take a guess how many of those promises Obama’s health-care legislation actually kept? Here’s a hint: It’s a nice round number.
Therein lies the root cause of Warren’s strategy: Rather than making specific promises related to single-payer health care—which she knows she cannot possibly keep—she wants to conduct her campaign on the issue solely in platitudes. She will tell middle-class people they will pay less, but won’t say precisely how they will pay less, or who will pay more, or who qualifies as “middle class,” or how much doctors and hospitals would get hurt if (more like when) they have to take a massive pay cut under single payer.
Ironically, the lack of specifics has made some on the left leery that if and when Warren wins the Democratic nomination, she will make the proverbial “hard pivot” away from support for single payer, and water down the plan introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). (Some think she hasn’t really endorsed Sanders’ plan as it is.) They do have cause for concern, given that until earlier this year, Warren had endorsed other “pathways” to get to universal coverage than a full socialized medicine scheme.
But viewed from another perspective, Warren’s silence on all the difficult (and unpopular) decisions needed to achieve a single-payer health-care system represents an implicit admission that the left cannot be upfront with the American people about all the consequences—both intended and unintended—of their agenda.
Just Tell People It’s Free
Last month, in an article about Sen. Kamala Harris’ repeated flip-flops on health care, a researcher at one liberal think-tank unironically articulated what’s going on here. Calling arguments in the Democratic debates counterproductive, the analyst said the American public “just want[s] to know the candidates’ big ideas and values. Can they shop? Is it free?”
Apart from the obvious fact that few things in life, let alone our massive health care system, come free—someone pays, in some way, shape, or form—that comment lies at the heart of Warren’s strategy: “We’re going to give you all the free stuff you want. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about the details.”
Having not been born yesterday, I will care about the details, thank you. I—and the American people—have far too much to lose.