Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Friday that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren's $20 million "Medicare for All" plan was "more socialist than Bernie Sanders'" because Americans "don't pay" any costs.
"Today, Elizabeth Warren showed her plans are more socialist than Bernie Sanders,'" Fleischer, who served in the Bush 43 administration, said on Twitter.
"Bernie says the middle class has to pay for Medicare for All," he said. "They'll have skin in the game.
"Not Warren," Fleischer added. "She is for pie-in-the-sky healthcare [that] is free and people don't pay.
"That's socialism."
After strong attacks by Sanders, I-Vt., and other 2020 contenders, Warren, D-Mass., said Friday that her Medicare plan would be financed without a tax hike on middle-class Americans.
Her proposal would transfer to the government 98% of the $8.8 trillion Warren estimated that employers would spend on private insurance for their employees.
Companies with fewer than 50 employees would be exempted — and employers already offering health benefits under union collective-bargaining agreements could reduce the amount of money they send to the federal government, so long as they passed those savings on to employees.
In addition, if the program did not raise $8.8 trillion, Warren said the difference would come from a supplemental contribution required from large companies "with extremely high executive compensation and stock buyback rates."
Warren's plan was besieged by Republicans and Democrats alike, with White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow warning it would be "devastating to the economy" — and Joe Biden's campaign dismissing the proposal as "mathematical gymnastics."
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