Colbert quizzes Bernie Sanders on middle-class tax hike for Medicare-for-all after pressing Warren
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Late Show" host Stephen Colbert had Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the hot seat on Thursday night and quizzed him on whether the middle class will face tax hikes to fund Medicare-for-all similarly to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
"Senator Warren was on here last week and I asked her about her plans for Medicare-for-all and I'm going to ask you the question that I asked her... at the risk of being accused of trumpeting Republican talking points," Colbert warned Sanders. "Is there an increase in taxes on the middle class to pay for Medicare-for-all, or rather, where would the tax burden go to pay for that?"
"Under my legislation... nobody in America will pay any more premiums," Sanders responded. "No more co-payments, gone. No more out-of-pocket expenses, gone. Nobody will go bankrupt... because of medical bills, that is gone. Nobody in America under my bill will pay more than $200 a year in total for their prescription drugs."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Now having said that, is health care free? No, it is not," the 2020 hopeful continued. "So what we do is exempt the first $29,000 of a person's income... Above that, in a progressive way with the wealthiest people paying the largest percentage, people do pay more in taxes."
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Last week, Colbert attempted to ask Warren the same question, but struggled to get a direct answer from her.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“You keep being asked in the debates how are you going to pay for it, are you going to be raising the middle-class taxes… How are you going to pay for it? Are you going to be raising the middle-class taxes?” Colbert asked.
“So, here’s how we’re going to do this,” Warren responded. “Costs are going to go up for the wealthiest Americans, for big corporations… and hard-working middle-class families are going to see their costs going down.”
“But will their taxes go up?” Colbert pressed.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“But, here’s the thing,” Warren said.
“But, here’s the thing,” Colbert grinningly interrupted. “I’ve listened to these answers a few times before and I just want to make a parallel suggestion to you that you might defend the taxes perhaps that you’re not mentioning in your sentence.”
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He continued by sharing his “parallel suggestion”: “Isn’t Medicare-for-all like public school? There might be taxes for it, but you certainly save a lot of money sending your kids to school and do you want to live in a world where your kids aren’t educated? Do you want to live in a world where your fellow citizens are dying, even if it costs a little bit of money?”