Hey, Hillary Clinton! Lay off the Republican talking points.
Her campaign's latest attack on Bernie Sanders is straight out of the GOP's playbook. What gives?
Hillary Clinton is apparently so assured of victory in the Democratic presidential primary that she is already positioning herself to sell out the left. One of her campaign flacks recently picked a fight with Bernie Sanders' campaign on taxes, claiming that his health care plan would mean huge tax increases and a decrease in take-home pay for the middle class.
This is extremely depressing.
Not only is Clinton already playing into the stereotype that she is nothing but a will-to-power human void, she is utterly mistaken on the merits. She would do well to stop validating Republican arguments.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Sanders has consistently been in favor of a single-payer health care system — or Medicare for all. (Listen to him give a valiant but doomed speech on the issue back in 2009, when ObamaCare was in the process of being passed.) He has rightly argued that Medicare for everyone would mean an increase in the average quality of health care for most people, particularly for those towards the bottom of the income ladder. When you look at the functioning-but-janky ObamaCare exchanges, or the performance of Medicare compared to the rest of the health care system, or the performance of similar programs across the world, this is simply inarguable.
Now, it's true that this would mean quite a lot more government spending. Medicare is already a huge line item in the federal budget, and putting everyone into it would jack up the price by quite a lot. Taxes would have to go up, and the middle class is no exception. The rich wouldn't be able to cover it all by themselves.
So Clinton flack Brian Fallon is right that taxes would have to be increased. However, he is totally wrong in this conclusion:
What he's overlooking is that when you're enrolled in Medicare, your personal health care expenditures are vastly decreased. If you get your insurance through your employer, take a look at your paycheck sometime and see how much of it goes towards insurance. Especially if you've got kids, it's probably a lot.
Or for people on ObamaCare, let's imagine a family of four living in Mississippi. They're 35 and 33, with two kids aged 5 and 2, with a household income of $50,000 (just about the median). A quick scan of Healthcare.gov suggests that such people would pay between $4,500 and $5,000 for silver-level plans, taking into account a sizable tax credit. That's about a tenth of their income, right there.
In other words, you'd be getting something really good for the increased taxes: portable, universal, high-quality insurance that would cover your whole family, no questions asked, forever. Of course, you do have to pay for certain parts of Medicare, but given that it is the about the cheapest per-unit part of the U.S. health care system, most people would almost certainly come out ahead — paying less in taxes than they previously did in premiums.
So Fallon is talking out of his hat. But what's so utterly pernicious about his argument is how thoroughly it partakes of Republican talking points. Taxes are represented as a straightforward grab and pre-tax income is presented as the only legitimate way to boost incomes — leading inevitably to the conclusion that taxes should always be kept as low as possible. No way to fund a decent welfare system with that attitude.
This is not a purely theoretical debate, either. America stands at a crossroads with its health care system. The ObamaCare exchanges have been a giant pain in the neck, and screwed a lot of people over, but they basically work. Moving forward, conservatives might even try and change Medicare and Medicaid over to an ObamaCare-style system, since it is the most conservative possible idea that could ever conceivably work.
Leftists, on the other hand, favor moving the other direction — putting more and more people onto Medicare and Medicaid (putting all children into Medicare would be a good first step), until we arrive at single-payer from either direction, and ObamaCare is just a minor vestige.
If Hillary Clinton is trying to dispel the idea that she'd sell out the best parts of the American welfare state in pursuit of a self-aggrandizing bargain with conservatives, she's not doing a good job of it.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.
-
6 unmissable museum exhibitions to see this fall
The Week Recommends Elizabeth Catlett, Tamara de Lempicka and Marina Abramovic are in the spotlight
By Catherine Garcia, The Week US Published
-
College admissions data reveals early effects of affirmative action's end
In the spotlight A sneak peek at how the Supreme Court's decision has panned out
By Theara Coleman, The Week US Published
-
'Farmland has declined under both parties'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
How could J.D. Vance impact the special relationship?
Today's Big Question Trump's hawkish pick for VP said UK is the first 'truly Islamist country' with a nuclear weapon
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
Biden, Trump urge calm after assassination attempt
Speed Reads A 20-year-old gunman grazed Trump's ear and fatally shot a rally attendee on Saturday
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Supreme Court rejects challenge to CFPB
Speed Read The court rejected a conservative-backed challenge to the way the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is funded
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Arizona court reinstates 1864 abortion ban
Speed Read The law makes all abortions illegal in the state except to save the mother's life
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Trump, billions richer, is selling Bibles
Speed Read The former president is hawking a $60 "God Bless the USA Bible"
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
The debate about Biden's age and mental fitness
In Depth Some critics argue Biden is too old to run again. Does the argument have merit?
By Grayson Quay Published
-
How would a second Trump presidency affect Britain?
Today's Big Question Re-election of Republican frontrunner could threaten UK security, warns former head of secret service
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
Trump’s rhetoric: a shift to 'straight-up Nazi talk'
Why everyone's talking about Would-be president's sinister language is backed by an incendiary policy agenda, say commentators
By The Week UK Published