About 600,000 people work in the health and medical insurance industry in the United States, according to market research firm IBIS World. Under Medicare-for-All, these people and many others would likely lose their jobs, since private insurance would be abolished.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who recently released her dubious plan to fund Medicare-for-All, was recently asked what would happen to the hundreds of thousands of people who would lose their jobs under her single-payer health care plan.
“No one gets left behind,” Warren responded. “Some of the people currently working in health insurance will work in other parts of insurance. In life insurance, in auto insurance, in car insurance. Some will work for Medicaid.”
“And there is a five-year transition support for everyone,” she continued. “Because, what this is about is how we strengthen America’s middle class and how we make sure, in transitions, no one gets left behind. It’s right there in the plan and it’s fully paid for.”
Q: Where do those who work in health insurance go when private insurance is eliminated?
Sen. Warren: “No one gets left behind. Some of the people currently working in health insurance will work in other parts of insurance. In life insurance, in auto insurance, in car insurance.” pic.twitter.com/KGJ4Eg9VKR
— The Hill (@thehill) November 2, 2019
This sounds an awful lot like Warren is claiming ‘If you like your job, you can keep your job.” It also sounds like the much criticized “learn to code,” a skill journalists suggested displaced coal workers learn but then claimed the phrase was harmful when suggested back to them.
It is not so easy, even with the five-year transition plan to move one entire industry (health insurance) into another (car or life insurance). There are not 600,000-plus job openings in the other insurance industries to accommodate those people, and that’s not even factoring in where the jobs might be if they were available. We’re talking about thousands upon thousands of people potentially needing to move in order to transition into another type of insurance. That’s a ton of people whose lives will be uprooted due to Warren’s plan.
Luckily, the probability of Warren actually getting her Medicare-for-All plan passed is close to zero. She has claimed that her plan won’t raise taxes on the middle class, which is impossible and something her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has admitted would be necessary. Warren’s plan to fund her single-payer proposal hinges in part on immigration reform, something Presidents Donald Trump Barack Obama, and George W. Bush could not achieve.
Her funding plan would also end up costing the middle class, as the numerous taxes she plans to place on employers would inevitably be passed on to employees.
Warren also relies on phantom funding to raise $2.3 trillion toward paying the $52 trillion price tag on Medicare-for-All. She claims she can raise $2.3 trillion from better IRS enforcement, yet the Congressional Budget Office has previously stated improved enforcement would only bring in a net $35 billion.
Warren had admitted previously that her health care plan could cost upwards of 2 million jobs, but dismissed those losses by discussing health care costs.
“I think this is part of the cost issue and should be part of a cost plan,” she said at a recent forum in New Hampshire. “Although I do recognize on this what we’re talking about, and that is in effect how much of our health care dollars have not gone to health care, how many of those dollars have been pulled out in other directions.”