Elizabeth Warren’s Flip-Flop-Flip On Single Payer

Supporters of a single-payer health care system better enjoy Senator Elizabeth Warren’s comments supporting their plan because there’s a chance that pretty soon she’ll have changed her position again. That’s because Warren has flip-flopped on single-payer at least three times already during her political career.

In 2008, Warren was a very strong supporter a single-payer health care system in the United States. Writing in her book, Health At Risk, Warren stated that single-payer was the “most obvious” solution to health care reform:

“We approach the health care debates from a single perspective: maintaining the financial stability of families confronting illness or injury. The most obvious solution would be universal single-payer health care. This would allow people to get the care they need – without risking bankruptcy to pay for it.”

Yet, Warren had the opposite opinion of single-payer when she was running for the Senate in 2012. On NECN’s “Broadside,” Warren stated that she did not support single-payer, saying that the country should “stay with what’s possible”:

NECN’s JIM BRAUDE: “If you were the tsarina, something like single payer health care, government run [unintelligible], far lower administrative costs, that sort of thing, would be the Senator Warren prescription, would it not?” WARREN: “I think right now what we have to do – I’m serious about this – I think you’ve got to stay with what’s possible. And I think what we’re doing – and look at the dust-up around this. We really need to consolidate our gains around what we’ve got on the table.”

Now in 2017, the Democratic Party is moving to the extreme far-left to an extent never seen before. Due to the Democratic Party’s ideological extremism, Warren is once again flip-flopping on single-payer. Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Warren now wants Democrats to run on making a single-payer system a reality in 2018 and 2020:

“She said Democrats on the ballot in the next two federal elections should back a national single-payer health-care plan. ‘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,’ she said during an interview in her Senate office last week. ‘Now it’s time for the next step. And the next step is single payer.’”

Warren’s flip-flop-flip on single-payer shows her to be a politician who chiefly cares about advancing herself politically. Warren sees how extreme the Democratic Party has become and is doing everything in her power to position herself at the front of their leftward surge.