Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s long-awaited "Medicare-for-all" funding plan is a "disaster" for her campaign, said Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt on Friday, comparing it to the much-criticized release of her Native American DNA test.
"What makes this a political nonstarter is that it rests on the idea of taking away people's existing health insurance," he said on "America's Newsroom," arguing that most Americans will reject the idea of giving up their employer-based insurance in favor of a government-run system.
"It's just politically toxic and it's a reflection of a campaign that - much like we saw when she rolled out her Native American DNA test - what a disaster that was. This is Elizabeth Warren doing it again."
Warren faced mockery last year when she released a DNA test that showed a trace of Native American heritage, emboldening critics who had long accused her of embellishing on the issue.
FUNDING MEDICARE-FOR-ALL WITH TAXES ONLY ON RICH IS 'IMPOSSIBLE,' STUDY SAYS
Warren projects the government-run Medicare-for-all health care system would cost a staggering sum of "just under $52 trillion" over the next decade, with the campaign proposing a host of new tax increases to pay for it while still claiming the middle class would not face any additional burden.
“We don’t need to raise taxes on the middle class by one penny to finance Medicare-or-all,” Sen. Warren, D-Mass., said in her plan — a copy of which was obtained by Fox News in advance of its release Friday.
Some of Warren’s rivals for the nomination are unlikely to buy that claim, after having repeatedly challenged her assertions that the middle class would not be hit by tax hikes and suggesting she has not been upfront with voters.
"It won't fly, Orville," Stirewalt responded, noting that Warren has been praised for "having a plan for everything" and being specific about her various policy proposals. But he said her health care plan "undercuts" that plank of her campaign.
"[The plan] is partly funded through a confiscation of existing wealth that there is not any precedent for inside our constitutional system. This is way over the edge," he said.
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The campaign's detailed Medicare-for-all proposal, however, insists that the costs can be covered by a combination of existing federal and state spending on Medicare and other health care -- as well as a myriad of taxes on employers, financial transactions, the ultra-wealthy and large corporations and some savings elsewhere.
Those measures are meant to pay for a projected $20.5 trillion in new federal spending. Notably, they include what is essentially a payroll tax increase on employers, something economists generally say can hit workers in the form of reduced wages.
Fox News' Brooke Singman and Judson Berger contributed to this report.