Bernie, Hillary and more government healthcare

At last night’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton accused Bernie Sanders of wanting to gut Obamacare.

Sanders said that is “nonsense.” But Sanders also said Obamacare isn’t nearly enough.

“(There are) 29 million people who still don’t have health insurance,” he said.

So under his plan every man, woman, and child, would get health care as a right. And the money to pay for it would come from higher taxes.

For incomes over $250,000, the tax rate would start rising from 37 percent up to &#8212 brace yourself if you’re a CEO or a quarterback &#8212 up to 52 percent for incomes over 10 million.
You’d also pay a health insurance premium of 2.2 percent of your income, and your employer would kick in more as well.

But in exchange, Sanders says all deductibles, all co-pays and all prescription charges would disappear.

It’s a huge tax increase on the rich, but for a family of four earning $50,000 a year, Sanders says the cost would be about $466.

That’s his plan. And Hillary Clinton thinks it has one very big flaw &#8212 which came out during the Obamacare debate.

“There was an opportunity to vote for what was called ‘the public option,’ in other words, people could buy in to Medicare,” she said. “And even when the Democrats were in charge, we couldn’t get the votes for that.”

To which Sanders says &#8212 you have to get Democrats to vote differently by taking the money out of politics.

“What this is really about is whether we have the guts to stand up to the private insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry,” he argued.

How difficult can that be?