Why some of Elizabeth Warren's Medicare-for-all financing plan might be 'implausible'

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) unveiled her plan to finance Medicare-for-all without a middle class tax increase Friday, and while she's received a fair amount of praise, others were quicker to point out some flaws.

Josh Barro wrote in New York that he found many of the ideas in the plan to be "worthy," but he also noted that a few were "implausible," and probably don't do enough to solve the financing issues that are currently blocking the U.S.'s path to single-payer. He's not sold on the senator doubling her proposal to increase an annual wealth tax on billionaires from 3 percent to 6 percent — the proposed tax is already "constitutionally dubious," Barro writes, and he's also skeptical about her adviser's confidence in enforcing it. Along those lines, Barro doesn't think it's realistic to expect an extra $3 trillion per decade through increased spending on tax enforcement alone, even though the writer favors such a move himself.

Ultimately, Barro says he remains convinced Warren would not enact single payer health care if elected next year since she'll either be working with a Republican-controlled Senate, or a slim Democratic majority which would still consist of moderates who wouldn't sign up for a lot of the proposals she has brought to the table. Read more at New York.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

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.

Sign up