Next Step Single Payer Says Elizabeth Warren

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As the Republican Party continues to fumble the football on the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) believes that the answer is to continue growing government’s influence, not to lessen it.

Warren, on Tuesday, did not just come out swinging against the Republicans, but she suggested that her Democrat Party add a new position to its national platform: A national single-payer system.

“President Obama tried to move us forward with health-care coverage by using a conservative model that came from one of the conservative think tanks that had been advanced by a Republican governor in Massachusetts. Now it’s time for the next step. And the next step is single payer,” Warren told the Wall Street Journal.

This would be a step up from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a Democratic presidential contender in 2016, who wanted Medicare for all, a stark line in the sand from former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic Nominee for President, Hillary Clinton, who once said the idea would “never, ever come to pass.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has also dismissed the single payer notion in the past, expressing only that she wishes to protect the current legislation instituted by former President Barack Obama.

According to Seattle Times, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a faction of the Left of which Sanders and Warren are often associated, agree with the idea of single payer. The DSA has been protesting the GOP bills, as well as promoting the need for single payer as a new way forward.

Warren, according to the Seattle Times, has been pushing the party to become more progressive, asking they the Democrats begin to start pushing big government ideas such as a minimum wage, regulating the financial industry, forgiving student loans and expanding Social Security.

“The progressive agenda is America’s agenda,” she said. “It’s not like we’re trying to sell stuff that people don’t want … It’s not that at all. It’s that we haven’t gotten up there and been as clear about our values as we should be, or as clear and concrete about how we’re going to get there.”