Thread by @HoarseWisperer

Okay, I completed the first read of Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare for All plan and now the “no taxes on the middle class” language is making me really cringe.

(standard disclaimer before we go further: I’m super-pro universal healthcare. The only question is “how?”)

1/

One of the key elements of Warren’s funding plan is a mechanism that basically charges employers a flat fee per employee as their contribution toward our healthcare system.

That fee begins as the avg cost they’re paying per employee for healthcare now.

Sounds good so far.

2/

So, Company X, if you’re paying $10k per employee toward healthcare, you’ll have to pay $10k in a new healthcare contribution. You’ll just pay the government instead of an insurance co.

Still good so far.

3/

Eventually, that average number would go away and be replaced with a national average. So, your own company history wouldn’t matter anymore.

Now, let’s put this into practice.

4/

Healthcare costs are lower for young people. People in their 20’s, for example, tend to get sick less, be married less, etc..

They sign up for single coverage and don’t use it much.

They’re cheap to insure relatively speaking.

They also have lower salaries.

5/

Under Warren’s plan, employers will eventually get dinged for how much it costs employers to insure the average American though.

So, instead of paying $3k for that young employee making $30k, they’d be paying, say $10k.

6/

The cost of employing that person just went up 20%...

...and that’s going to either result in job losses or salary cuts.

The employer ain’t gonna eat a 20% hike on labor costs for their least-experienced employees.

7/

The likely result would be a combo of both. Some job losses and a greater adjustment in salaries to calibrate for what labor now costs the employer.

The lowest earners would be the most vulnerable to salary cuts because they’re the ones who would now cost an employer more.

8/

While I could not possibly more loathe to acknowledge this, Matt Bruenig has a good piece on this.

Warren’s approach here appears to be a sleight of hand that masks the highly likely pass-through of costs to middle- and low-income working people as something other than a tax.
9/

Not sure if I’ve explained this well but the punchline is that Warren’s plan all but assures that a financial burden will be borne by the very people she is promising wouldn’t pay a dime.

It’s transparent enough to feel gross to me. Feels close to flatly dishonest IMHO.

10/

Politicians spin things. I get it.

This isn’t spin though. It feels to me like the deliberate design of a solution that masks costs Warren doesn’t want to acknowledge very much exist.

Feels gimmicky in a lot of bad ways.

I don’t like it. And I hate to say that...

...because I really appreciate what Warren did overall here.

She endeavored to confront the subject of rationalizing and defending M4A head on. I give her props for that.

She took a shady shortcut to the finish line though. Shoulda just admitted there’s a cost to be paid.

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