Warren Confirms She Would Make Private Health Insurance Illegal. Here's What That Would Actually Look Like.

Katie Pavlich | June 27, 2019 12:00 PM

During the first Democrat debate Wednesday night, statist and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren vowed to destroy the private health insurance market by replacing it with a completely government run program.

Here she is explaining her position:

So what does this mean? More than 250 million Americans have a private health insurance plan that they like and want to keep. The majority of them get their health insurance through an employer. If Warren were successful, their private health insurance would be illegal and eliminated. We know this because it's written in the plan she's endorsed from socialist Bernie Sanders. Warren's plan would not only destroy the health insurance market, but upend the U.S. economy.

From the New York Times:

Doing away with an entire industry would also be profoundly disruptive. The private health insurance business employs at least a half a million people, covers about 250 million Americans, and generates roughly a trillion dollars in revenues. Its companies’ stocks are a staple of the mutual funds that make up millions of Americans’ retirement savings.

Such a change would shake the entire health care system, which makes up a fifth of the United States economy, as hospitals, doctors, nursing homes and pharmaceutical companies would have to adapt to a new set of rules. Most Americans would have a new insurer — the federal government — and many would find the health insurance stocks in their retirement portfolios much less valuable.