“Patient Talking With Doctor” by NIHClinicalCenter is licensed under CC BY 2.0

There is nothing complicated about this conclusion, but we ought to be clear about it.

Warren got herself boxed-in on medical care.  She repeatedly said she wouldn’t raise medical “costs” for the middle class, but other candidates and the press accused her of using “costs” as a smokescreen to hide taxes.  That forced her hand—to defend herself she had to make medical care free, a position quite different from where she started.  The middle class would pay neither premiums nor taxes.

That meant coming up with an awful lot of money.  The Warren proposal is a highly optimistic exercise in finding taxes and cost-savings to make it fly.  As opposed to all the other proposals—which involve some form of participant contribution—this one takes all the participant payments from general tax funds.  And it needs so much money you have to say that the well is now largely dry.

That has consequences for everything else.  For climate this is particularly sensitive, because there is every reason to believe that current cost estimates are decidedly on the low side.  What’s more, the costs included in the Inslee climate plan (which Warren now supports in principle) come to $9T over ten years, whereas the taxes from Warren’s own climate plan only cover $3T.   The rest is yet to be done.

Healthcare is too expensive to expect it just to fit it in.  It’s fantasy to believe it doesn’t matter.