Seriously.

About a month ago I wrote an article entitled “Your Barry Goldwater is Showing: Hillary Clinton Attempts to Undermine Single-Payer.” That piece was a response to Secretary Clinton’s attacks on Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All plan at the third Democratic debate. I accused her of “trotting out talking points against providing healthcare to all of our citizens as a right straight out of the conservative playbook.” I was hoping this was a one off thing and she would realize the folly of her strategy. This week, it became abundantly clear that not only was she not going to back away, she was going to double down.

From Hillary Clinton on Monday:

"His [Bernie Sanders’] plan would take Medicare and Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program and the Affordable Care Act health-care insurance and private employer health insurance and he would take that all together and send health insurance to the states, turning over your and my health insurance to governors...I don’t believe number one we should be starting over. We had enough of a fight to get to the Affordable Care Act. So I don’t want to rip it up and start over."

Then on Thursday, she had her daughter Chelsea Clinton spouting similar rhetoric:

”Sen. Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare, and dismantle private insurance. I worry if we give Republicans Democratic permission to do that, we’ll go back to an era – before we had the Affordable Care Act – that would strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance.”

So now I’m pleading with you Secretary Clinton...please STOP.

First off, this line of attack is a complete distortion of Sanders’ plan and an unnecessary slander of the universal, single-payer model. At best it is incredibly misleading and at worst it is an outright falsehood. To imply that Bernie Sanders’ plan would dismantle healthcare in this country and deny millions of people their health insurance isn’t just wrong, it is one of the most irresponsible and desperate tactics I’ve ever seen from a Democratic candidate running for the presidency.

Bernie Sanders’ may technically want to “dismantle” Obamacare, but only once it was being replaced by something greater, something that didn’t just provide “near universal” coverage, but ensured all Americans had access to decent quality healthcare as a fundamental right. Dismantling Medicare? Come on. That’s only true if you define dismantling as “greatly expanding the program so all of our citizens can access this popular and effective program.”

Last night, her press secretary Brian Fallon jumped into the fray, spreading more misinformation on Twitter and claiming that this plan would be nothing but a large tax increase on the middle class.

“Your taxes will go up by at least 9%,” he claimed.

Well, that might be true, but in his attempts at fear-mongering the Clinton staffer naturally left out some very important aspects of the story. For one, the plan he is referencing, legislation Bernie Sanders introduced for single payer in previous sessions, did not raise middle class taxes by 9%. Most of the working and middle class would have seen about a 2% increase. The rest was a funded by a 6.7% increase on their employer’s, not an individual’s, payroll tax. Fallon in his tweet claimed that this would all be passed directly to workers, citing “economists” (which economists is unclear).

Assuming he is right and that gets passed onto the worker and individuals do in fact see a full 9% tax increase, he left out how this would actually amount to a cost SAVINGS for most Americans. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation report released in 2015, Americans were spending an average of $4,955 per individual on health insurance premiums. So, just making a rough estimate on that number alone, all workers making $55,000 would either see their costs on premiums alone stay the same, or more likely, see them decrease.

Let me remind you of an important statistic: 71% of all Americans make less than $50,000 a year.

Given that figure, slightly more than 71% of Americans would see what they are spending on health insurance premiums decrease or, for those at the higher end of that scale, stay the same. This isn’t even taking into account our current rising deductibles and prescription drug costs, both of which would be curtailed under a Medicare for All system.

This attempt by the Clinton campaign to attack Medicare for All from the right is also an incredibly dangerous play when it comes to the future of both the Democratic Party and our entire country. She is going against the overwhelming majority of her own party when she takes this stance, as polling from as recently as last year revealed that 80% of Democrats support this policy. Just over half of the whole population was also in favor.

If she were to prevail in this fight, it would put the issue on the fringe for Democratic candidates going forward and immediately end any discussion of this as a national policy for years to come. We’ve come too far in our quest to provide quality healthcare to every American to let this happen. What Hillary is doing now is providing the right wing endless soundbytes and talking points that will be thrown back at us both during this election and in many more to come. We’d expect this from the right wing extremists, but et tu, Hillary?

This current tactic is hurtful to the party, hurtful to the country and flies in the face of a dream long held by Democrats since the days of FDR and Harry Truman. It even flies in the face of the Hillary Clinton that ran for office in 2008. When Obama put out a mailer attacking her on universal healthcare, she gave the following statement, which does such a succinct job of saying exactly what needs to be said to her right now:

"I am here to say, it is not only wrong, but it is undermining core Democratic principles. Since when do Democrats attack one another on universal healthcare? I thought we were trying to realize Harry Truman’s dream…This is wrong and every Democrat should be outraged. This is the kind of attack that not only undermines core Democratic values, but gives aid and comfort to the very special interests and their allies in Republican Party that are against doing what we want to do for America. Shame on you...” (video here)

Shame on you, Hillary. Shame on you.

Erik Altieri is the President of the Agenda Project and the Agenda Project Action Fund

Stay up to date on our latest work by following us on Facebook and Twitter.