If there’s one thing Joe Biden wants people to know about his new health care plan, it’s this: It is not Medicare for All. “Read the plan,” he told reporters about his proposal, which would bolster Obamacare and add a public option. “I’m not criticizing Bernie. It’s just everybody should know the Medicare plan that will replace existing Medicare, it’s not the same plan. It doesn’t mean it’s not good or bad or different, but it’s different. It’s not the same plan.”

Driving home the point, Biden has spent much of the week targeting Sanders, making the case that Medicare for All is both a pipe dream and, apparently, an affront to Barack Obama’s legacy. “I knew the Republicans would do everything in their power to repeal Obamacare,” he said in a promotional video timed to the release of his health care plan. “They still are. But I’m surprised that so many Democrats are running on getting rid of it.”

The Affordable Care Act was a historic achievement. 20 million Americans gained coverage. Over 100 million with pre-existing conditions finally got protection. We can’t tear it down.



So today, I’m releasing my plan to Protect & Build on Obamacare: https://t.co/RIhlOcOWK8 pic.twitter.com/laDUcIhRjM — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 15, 2019

Sanders himself has fired back a number of times, pointing out factual inaccuracies in Biden’s critique—including his delusory claim that a transition to Medicare for All would create a “hiatus” in health coverage. “I am disappointed, I have to say, in Joe, who is a friend of mine, really distorting what Medicare for All is about,” Sanders told The New York Times on Wednesday. “And unfortunately, he is sounding like Donald Trump. He is sounding like the health care industry in that regard.” In other statements, Sanders has argued that Biden’s plan is aligned with “corporate greed,” and that it echoes what “the insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical industries, Republicans do: ignoring the fact that people will save money on their health care because they will no longer have to pay premiums or out-of-pocket expenses.”



“They will no longer have high deductibles and high co-payments,” Sanders added.



It was arguably the first broad policy disagreement between leading candidates in the 2020 Democratic primary, though it was largely overshadowed by coverage of Donald Trump’s racist attacks on four Democratic members of Congress. For Biden, it was also meant as something of a reset. He had tried to fly above the fray through the first few months of the primary; now, with the release of the plan, he was getting down to business.

