Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Clash Immediately on Healthcare:: You Can’t Beat Trump With ‘Double Talk’
The two frontrunners at the second Democratic debate sparred early over their respective healthcare plans, with Vice President Joe Biden directly calling out Sen. Kamala Harris’ conflicting positions in the short time she’s been a presidential candidate.
“You can’t beat President Trump with double talk,” he said.
Harris just released a healthcare plan that would phase in Medicare to the whole population over 10 years while maintaining a role for private insurance. But in previous campaign events — and at the first Democratic debate in June — Harris seemed to contradict her new plan by indicating she was ready to eliminate private insurance much sooner. She was also a cosponsor of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill, which would convert the nation’s healthcare to a single-payer system over a four-year period.
“I devised a plan where it will be ten years of transition,” Harris said in a rebuttal to Biden’s comments earlier in the week calling her plan a “have-it-every-which-way” approach. “I designed a plan where yes, responsive to the needs of American families, there will be a public plan under my plan for Medicare and the private plan under my plan for Medicare. Because the bottom line is this, we must agree that access to health care must be a right and not just a privilege of those who can afford it. 30 million people are going without access to health care.”
Biden, however, attacked the plan as far too costly and hit Harris for having shifted her policy stances.
“My response is the senator had several plans so far and any time someone tells you you’re going to get something good in 10 years, you should wonder why it takes 10 years,” Biden said. “If you notice, there is no talk that the plan in 10 years will cost $3 trillion. You will lose your employer-based insurance and, in fact, you know, this is the single most important issue facing the public and, to be very blunt and to be very straightforward, you can’t beat President Trump with double talk on this plan.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
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