Elizabeth warren has provided more details about her healthcare plan, and it is a little baffling that she and her team thought this would go over well. Here is a link to her plan. And just as a heads up, yes this is likely to be heavy on opinion as the topic is speculative on events years in advance. If you think my opinions are incorrect, please let me know what you think.
Passing any kind of healthcare reform, whether it is Biden's plan, Buttigieg's or medicare for all, is going to be a brutal fight. Every republican will fight it. Some of the democrats, like Joe Manchin, are likely to fight it too.
Warren's plan is to have that brutal fight, but not to pass medicare for all (as she claims she supports) but to essentially do Pete's plan instead. Then 3 years later (before the end of the 1st term but likely after the midterm election) have the fight again to try to implement Medicare for all. This might be a good plan from a wonky, technocratic point of view. But from a political point of view it is insane.
The way it will play it out is like this. Democrats will fight for pete's plan and maybe get it passed. Then 3 years later, assuming warren pushes for Medicare for all at all, she will find that very few elected democrats have any interest in passing it. They already passed a healthcare reform. Most of them don't support medicare for all anyway. They will be happy with Pete's plan and not want to implement medicare for all. By putting pete's plan in 1st, she will temporarily alleviate some of the worst symptoms of the broken healthcare system and remove some of the pressure that could help pass medicare for all. This will make it even less likely she can get the democratic establishment to implement medicare for all. Even worse, it assumes that she wins the midterms. Historically the midterms swing support away from the president's party. It is entirely possible that after the midterm she loses enough support to actually pass it anyway.
In my opinion, this shows us 1 of 3 things. Potentially there could be elements of more than 1.
1) she doesn't have a solid enough understanding of politics to implement her plans. - If she thinks that splitting the healthcare reform into 2 separate political fights spaced a few years apart is a good political plan, that seems like she doesn't. It might be she is good at designing policy, but doesn't understand politics well enough to actually be in charge of implementing it.
2) This is her attempt at a cop out to try to win over the democratic establishment - The establishment of the democratic party don't want medicare for all. The progressive wing of the party insist on it. She wants to be seen as a progressive (she largely is one, i'm not saying she isn't) but also wants to be palatable to people like pelosi or clinton. So she is pushing for an implementation that is unlikely to work in an attempt to appeal to both sides.
3) This is her attempt to run as a progressive, but not actually pass medicare for all - It's possible she knows this won't work. That she knows perfectly well that the outcome will be Pete's plan and medicare for all won't get passed. It's possible this is an attempt to run as a progressive but not actually pass the main progressive policy and she is building in a way to deflect blame when it fails to pass.
Given that she is already being attacked from the right by Pete and Biden, it seems really odd that she has basically just opened up a huge target to be attacked from the left. In order to maintain support from progressives she needs to be crystal clear that she wants and will fight for medicare for all. This plan just creates more doubt.
