Top contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination torched one anotherâs proposals to reform the health care system Wednesday, as the contest to unify behind a single candidate to defeat President Donald Trump took a bitterly divisive turn.
Minutes after Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, warmed up the debate audience in Las Vegas by describing the party as a spirited but unified family, most of the candidates abruptly shifted into attack mode â and not just against Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman and former New York City mayor making his first, belated appearance in the ninth debate.
Fighting to regain momentum after weak performances in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts dispatched with her opponentsâ plans in brutally rapid succession.
Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend, Ind., mayor, has offered ânot a planâ but âa PowerPointâ that she claimed would leave millions uninsured, she said. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has a proposal that is âlike a Post-It note: Insert plan here,â she quipped. And Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose âMedicare for Allâ plan she initially adopted as her own, âhas a good start,â but his campaign cannot stop attacking those who question how it would work, she said.
âHealth care is a crisis in this country,â Warren concluded. âMy approach to this is, we need as much help for as many people as quickly as possible.â
It wasnât the only tense moment.
Sanders Angers The Culinary Workers Union
How Sandersâ Medicare for All proposal would affect unions in particular isnât a new question. But despite strong support for the proposal from some national unions, it emerged as a flashpoint in the run-up to Nevadaâs caucus on Saturday, turning the stateâs prominent Culinary Workers Union against Sanders, the current frontrunner, in the 11th hour.
The union did not endorse a candidate but warned members that Sandersâ proposal could eliminate the health care coverage they have gained through years of collective bargaining, replacing it with a system that is untested and unknown. The union then put out a statement last week saying its members had been âviciously attackedâ by Sandersâ supporters over the organizationâs opposition . Sanders responded by saying that, though there were some bad actors on social media, it was ânot thinkableâ that his supporters would attack union workers.
âLet me be very clear for my good friends in the Culinary Workers union, a great union: I will never sign a bill that will reduce the health care benefits they have,â Sanders said. âWe will only expand it for them, for every union in America and for the working class.â
Klobuchar defended the âhard-workingâ culinary workers âwho have health care plans that have been negotiated over time, sweat, and blood,â she said. âAnd that is the truth for so many Americans right now.â
Last summer Sanders tweaked his proposal to try to alleviate concerns from unions. Under a Medicare for All system, he said, the National Labor Relations Board would supervise unions in renegotiating contracts with employers, so that they could acquire âwrap-around services and other coverage not duplicative of the benefits established under Medicare-for-all.â
The idea, Sandersâ aides said then, was so that any savings a switch to single-payer achieved could still be passed on to workers, as increased benefits or wages.
But members of the Culinary Workers Union â and some other groups â still worry about losing the coverage they have, in exchange for something unknown.
Would that happen? Technically, yes, the health plan Nevadaâs culinary workers get through their union would no longer exist. Under Medicare for All, private health plans could not sell coverage that duplicates what the government program offers.
But itâs worth noting that, in this world, culinary workers would still have generous health insurance. Sandersâ envisioned health plan is robust â he says it would cover virtually all practicing physicians and medically necessary services, with virtually no cost-sharing.
Of course, that would also depend on whether a President Sanders could muster support for his plan among skeptical members of Congress.
$100 Billion In Profits
Sanders brought up one favorite talking point twice Wednesday â his claim that the health care industry makes $100 billion a year in profits. We previously checked this claim and rated it True. The number comes from adding the net revenues in 2018 from 10 pharmaceutical companies and 10 health insurance companies. We recalculated the numbers, and they added up. Experts said it was even likely that the figure was an underestimate.
Big Pharma Is Giving Money To Buttigieg And Others
In another biting moment, Sanders charged that drug companies are donating to Buttigieg and other campaigns as the pharmaceutical industry profits off the current system.
We previously checked Sandersâ claim that Buttigieg was a âfavorite of the health care industryâ and rated it Half True. This is in part because it is actually Sanders who has received the most donations of any Democratic candidate from the entire health care sector, which includes pharmaceutical companies, health insurance industry, hospitals/nursing homes and health professionals.
But, while checking this claim we also found that Buttigieg has received donations from employees and executives of pharmaceutical and health insurance companies such as AbbVie, Aetna, Anthem, Eli Lilly and Co., Merck & Co. and Pfizer. We did not check into donations for other candidates from pharmaceutical executives.
Do People âLoveâ Their Insurance?
âYou donât start out by saying, I have 160 million people, Iâm going to take away the insurance plan that they love,â Bloomberg said just minutes into the debate, pointing out the shortcomings of Sandersâ Medicare for All plan.
It is true that Sandersâ signature health proposal would eliminate private health insurance, replacing it with a single public plan that covers everybody. That would include the roughly 160 million Americans who get employer-sponsored insurance
But Bloombergâs argument here â that those people âloveâ their plans â is complicated.
When we previously checked a similar claim â that 160 million people âlike their health insuranceâ â we rated it Half-True. Cursory polling suggests people with that coverage are mostly satisfied.
But most isnât all. And, experts pointed out to us then, once Americans try to use that coverage, many find it lacking. In a Kaiser Family Foundation/ L.A. Times poll, for instance, 40% of people with employer-sponsored insurance still reported having trouble paying for medical bills, premiums or out-of-pocket costs. In that same poll, about half said they skipped or delayed health care because â even with coverage â they couldnât afford it. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.)
And More About Warrenâs Attach On Klobucharâs Health Plan
âAmy, I looked online at your (health care) plan. Itâs two paragraphs.â Warren said.
This is highly misleading.
Warrenâs campaign told PolitiFact that she was referring specifically to Klobucharâs plan for âuniversal health care.â It pointed to the two paragraphs at the end of this Klobuchar campaign web page, which come under the heading âPropose legislation to get us to universal health care.â
But that ignores most of Klobucharâs health care plan, which she outlines in quite a bit of detail on four different web pages â a main health care policy page, a more detailed sub-page, a sub-page on prescription drugs and a sub-page on mental health.
We did a word count on the text from those four web pages, and it exceeded 6,000 words â and a lot more than two paragraphs.
PolitiFactâs Louis Jacobson contributed.