The Hillary Clinton campaign on Wednesday defended recent criticism of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) health care proposal, calling on the senator to release details about his plan and how he would pay for it.
Recently, the Clinton campaign has stepped up attacks on Sanders, arguing that his plan for a single-payer health care system would raise taxes on the middle class and leave the implementation of the plan up to governors, who could refuse to cooperate.
Chelsea Clinton this week warned that Sanders’ plan would dismantle Obamacare and give too much power to governors.
“Sen. Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare, and dismantle private insurance,” she said. “I worry if we give Republicans democratic permission to do that, we’ll go back to an era — before we had the Affordable Care Act — that would strip millions and millions and millions of people of their health insurance.”
Sanders on Wednesday called out the Clinton campaign’s attacks, calling Chelsea Clinton’s claims “factually incorrect.”
He released a statement slamming Clinton’s “Karl Rove tactics” and used Hillary Clinton’s own words in 2008 to accuse her of hypocrisy. The Sanders campaign pointed to a 2008 video in which Clinton criticized Barack Obama for criticizing her universal health care plan.
In the video, Clinton said that Democrats should not bash each other on universal health care, describing Obama’s attack as “undermining core Democratic principles.”
On Wednesday afternoon, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon if Clinton is “doing just that now against Sen. Sanders.”
“Not at all. There’s no difference or distinction in terms of the fact that both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders support the goal of universal health care,” Fallon responded, adding that in 2008, Obama and Clinton debated which plan was better.
“What’s happening right now is that Sen. Sanders won’t put forward any details about how he intends to make good on his plan to achieve universal health care,” Fallon said, adding that Sanders’ plan would raise taxes on the middle class.
“This is a full-frontal assault on Sanders’ universal health care proposal,” Tapper said in response to Fallon.
“Well, it is true, Jake, and we don’t back off of this,” Fallon replied, adding that Clinton is right to defend Obamacare.
And in a call with reporters on Wednesday afternoon, Clinton campaign officials called on the Sanders to reveal details about his health care plan before the Iowa caucus, according to USA Today. Sanders campaign has said it might not release the plan until February, according to USA Today.
“I think one can only draw the conclusion that the Sanders campaign does not want to outline what would amount to a massive across the board tax increase,” Clinton policy adviser Jake Sullivan said on the call, according to USA Today. “They want to essentially create a circumstance in which they try to lead voters to believe they can implement single-payer healthcare at no burden to anyone and everyone would be better off.”
Watch CNN’s interview with Brian Fallon:
Is anyone really suprised HRC’s play-nice facade was cast away the moment she stopped being the presumptive nominee?
Of course now that the gloves are off- the glove are off.
Well Sanders should actually put out more information if he want’s to claim he wants to go single payer and dismantle ACA. Though getting that through congress is pretty much not going to happen, and he would also have to change a ton of peoples opinion on the subject since even ACA still has a negative view by people even though it has been shown to be helping improve healthcare.
So disingenuous…
of course there would be across the board tax increases… to replace the insurance premiums that go away!
the $12k paid out for premiums between my employers cost on my contributions already could be paid in taxes to a more efficient system.
Sure, you could say my tax burden increased significantly and you would be technically correct, but intelectually dishonest.
HRC is playing into GOP BS talking points to win a democratic primary. And it’s democrats she is convincing to parrot GOP BS.
Sure, she is better than a repub, but I think in this way she sets back the party’s gains as far as accepting that progessive policies can work. This could kill the idea for single payer for another 25 yrs.
This is terrible as Both the successes and imperfections of the ACA show that Single payer is the next logical step to build on successes and improve imperfections.
Republicans must be excited to see a democrat trying to destroy a progressive ideal. The worst thing our party can do is to do their 1%we, corporate dirty work for them.
I don’t have any problem with rough-and-tumble politics. HRC’s problem here is that no one has more credibility on domestic policy questions like this than Bernie Sanders.
Attacks like this simply highlight her weakness in this area and garner a collective eye-roll from people who keep up with these kinds of issues.
I think the smart play here would be to continue to focus on her foreign policy chops.
Yep, and I find myself reminded of the negative aspects of the Clinton’s that were so stark in 2008 that, in my mind, had faded…
My guess is many primary supporters of Obama in 2008 are starting see/feel this too. I fear it will be worse and more desperate as this election is likely the last chance she has…