BOSTON (AP) — U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is planning to co-sponsor a bill by Sen. Bernie Sanders that would guarantee everyone in the country is covered by health insurance.

The Massachusetts Democrat said in an email to supporters Thursday that she’s backing Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill, calling health care “a basic human right.” The independent Vermont senator plans to introduce the legislation this month.

In the email, Warren said “Medicare for All is one way that we can give every single person in the country access to high quality health care. Everyone is covered. Nobody goes broke paying a medical bill.”


Warren drew on her family’s experience after her father suffered a heart attack. She said her parents struggled for years to pay the medical bills.

For Warren, eyed as a possible candidate for president in 2020, the announcement is the strongest sign of her support for a so-called single payer health insurance plan.

Warren said that her support grew stronger during the debate this year on a Republican effort to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care law. Warren said she heard from worried parents.

“One message kept hitting home: If the government hadn’t been there to help, these hard-working moms and dads would have been forced to pick between the health of their child and financial ruin,” she said.

Warren said other steps that could be taken include ending “insurance company price gouging”, ending high deductibles, and cutting the cost of prescription drugs by importing drugs from Canada.

Conservative groups have taken to criticizing what they described as Warren’s “flip flops” in recent months on the issue of whether she fully supports a single payer system. They say Warren had been reluctant to completely embrace a proposal that could hurt her in a presidential contest.


Warren, facing re-election next year, has downplayed talk about a 2020 White House bid.

“No. I am not running for president,” she told The Associated Press in August. “I have a race in 2018 and I take nothing for granted.”

Warren’s announcement reflects a larger debate among Democrats about how far they should go in support of a government-backed health care system.

A poll taken in July suggested that attitudes among Americans could be shifting left on the issue, with 62 percent saying it’s the federal government’s responsibility to make sure that all Americans have health care coverage, while 37 percent say it is not.

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll of 1,019 adults was conducted July 13-17 with a margin of sampling error for all respondents of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

On his website, Sanders described his “Medicare for All” plan as “a federally administered single-payer health care program” covering everything from inpatient and outpatient care, preventive and emergency care, and primary care and specialty care — including long-term and palliative care. It also would include vision, hearing and oral health care, mental health and substance abuse services, and prescription drugs.

Sanders said the proposal would be paid for in part by higher taxes on the wealthy and a 6.2 percent income-based health care premium paid by employers.