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Elizabeth Warren Suggests She May Be Willing to Put Aside Medicare-For-All If Selected as Biden VP


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One of the most abominable ideas pushed by Democrats recently?

Medicare-for-all.

Obamacare, which vastly increased government control over healthcare, was supposed to fix everything.

Instead, premiums rose and people lost their healthcare plans.

Now many of those same people that voted for Obamacare are pushing Medicare-for-all as an actual fix.

Take Elizabeth Warren for example.

She pushed Medicare-for-all heavily in her campaign and during the Democrat presidential debates.

But now that her presidential bid is gone, Warren hints that she may be willing to ignore Medicare-for-all as long as Biden picks her for Vice President.

Check out the details from Fox News:

Comments this week on health care by Sen. Elizabeth Warren are sparking speculation that she may be pivoting when it comes to her support for a government-run “Medicare-for-all” single-payer system, as presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden ramps up his search for a running mate.

The progressive champion from Massachusetts — who made “Medicare-for-all” a key issue in her White House run before suspending her campaign in March — said earlier this week: “I think right now people want to see improvements in our health care system. And that means strengthening the Affordable Care Act. We should be doing that anyway. That should be easy. We should be doing it right now.”

The senator’s comments — part of a speaker series for the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics — were prominently spotlighted in a story Thursday by Politico that was headlined: “Warren pivots on Medicare for All in bid to become Biden’s VP.”

Warren and Biden have repeatedly traded fire over health care policy, from last summer through early this year during the heat of the Democratic primaries. She and fellow populist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont championed “Medicare-for-all.” Biden, less of a firebrand than Warren, pushed for a public option based on traditional Medicare to strengthen the Affordable Care Act — better known as ObamaCare — that was passed and implemented during Biden’s eight years as vice president.

Warren’s comments come as she’s considered very much in the running — among other contenders — to be Biden’s running mate, and many political pundits are reading her words as the latest public signal that she very much wants to be the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee, and wants Biden to view her as a candidate in synch with his governing philosophy.

Biden — who announced in March that he would name a woman as his running mate — has long said he wants to “pick someone who is simpatico with” him on the key issues.

While the two candidates took aim at each other on numerous issues during the nomination battle, the two have coalesced since mid-March. Soon after Warren dropped out of the race, Biden adopted her proposal for bankruptcy reform, which was a key component of Warren’s progressive presidential campaign.

Earlier this month, Biden co-authored an op-ed with Warren in McClatchy newspapers, calling for stronger oversight of coronavirus pandemic relief funds. In that opinion piece, the former vice president joined Warren in acknowledging that “for many Americans, our economy wasn’t working even before the devastation of the COVID-19 crisis.”

This week, Biden publicly praised Warren’s questioning of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at a Senate hearing. And Fox News confirmed that Warren and Biden’s policy teams have been communicating on economic policy.

It only makes sense Warren has to overlook Medicare-for-all if she has any hope of becoming VP.

Watch a clip from six months ago where Biden accuses Warren of “making up” how she’d fund Medicare-for-all:

Perhaps there’s another reason Warren has taken her focus away from the program?

Maybe she’s too busy curtsying to wealthy donors on Biden’s behalf, something she swore she’d never do in her campaign?

Take a look:

While it’s admittedly a good thing to see Warren drop Medicare-for-all, at least for now, it just goes to show how Democrats will do anything necessary to obtain power.

Warren’s actions may actually be paying off for her though.

CNN reports that she’s a likely VP pick:

Joe Biden is thinking big.

Confronted with the prospect of taking office next year in the depths of a historic economic and health crisis, Biden is now talking about a bolder presidency, with ambitions stretching beyond the restoration of pre-Donald Trump normalcy.

And there is a growing sense in Democratic circles, particularly among the progressive wing of the party, that there is one sure way to show he means it: Make Elizabeth Warren his running mate.

The Massachusetts senator has mostly been regarded as a vice presidential dark horse more likely destined, if progressive dreams were answered, for a top cabinet position. But that calculation could be shifting as the factors influencing Biden's decision evolve in the face of a mushrooming catastrophe. Over the past month, the pair have forged a deeper personal connection, following the death of Warren's brother, and begun to sharpen their focus on common political ground as Biden publicly shifted on an issue that famously divided them nearly two decades ago.

Biden spent much of the Democratic primary locked in on a pledge to revive decency in American political culture. Warren ran on a call for "big, structural change" that launched her to the top of the polls in the summer of 2019, but didn't translate into success this year. The heart of Biden's appeal remains steady, but as the coronavirus fallout deepens, he has also begun to telegraph a desire to strike out with a more ambitious policy agenda -- a political enterprise, in scope and scale, that many Warren allies believe she is uniquely qualified to shepherd through the mazy, grinding gears of government.

That the possibility of sharing a ticket remains after a primary in which the two occasionally clashed in direct and personal terms is another marker of the fluidity of the race.

In November 2019, Warren responded to Biden's criticism of her "Medicare for All" plan by accusing him of "repeating Republican talking points" and suggesting the former vice president, given his position on the matter, might be "running in the wrong presidential primary." Biden struck back in an unusually blunt Medium post, calling out Warren -- though not by name -- for taking a "my way or the highway approach" he described as "condescending to the millions of Democrats who have a different view."

But that episode resonates now only as an outlier, a rare -- and brief -- bare-knuckle brawl in a contest that saw so few of them. Since Warren dropped out in March, she has been full of praise for Biden. His "decency," she told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow in an interview after she left the race, "comes through in pretty much everything he does."

Earlier this week, Biden tweeted a video of the pair teaming up to call and thank a small dollar donor -- a personal touch employed by the Massachusetts senator during her own campaign.

"I used to call my contributors," Biden tells a supporter in the clip, "but I never had as many until (Warren) endorsed me."

Warren, too, has been moved by the former vice president's efforts -- in particular his March decision to endorse Warren's consumer bankruptcy reform plan, which opens up new avenues for student debt relief. It had been a bone of contention between them tracing back decades, to when they famously squared off over it during a hearing on Capitol Hill. A source familiar with Warren's thinking said it meant a lot to her that Biden adopted her bankruptcy plan when she dropped out.

Still, Biden's decision-making process is expected to stretch on for weeks, if not months. And even as he and Warren come together on some hot button issues, there are still significant political gaps to bridge between the moderate stalwart and progressive icon. Warren is widely regarded as a "team player," but the degree to which Biden is willing to hand over significant power to an ideological rival, and what Warren is willing to concede in order to strike a partnership, remains an open question.



 

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