Elizabeth Warren AP Photo/John Minchillo

Sen. Elizabeth Warren released her much-anticipated plan to finance Medicare for All on Friday, proposing $20.5 trillion in new federal spending.

In a Medium post laying out details of her plan, Warren said it wouldn’t require tax increases on the middle class, placing most of its fiscal cost on businesses and the wealthy.

„We don’t need to raise taxes on the middle class by one penny,“ Warren wrote.

At the center of Warren’s newly-unveiled plan is a proposal to shift the money that employers already pay for healthcare from private insurance companies to the government.

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren released her much-anticipated plan to finance Medicare for All on Friday, proposing $20.5 trillion in new federal spending through substantial tax increases to provide health insurance to every person in the United States.

In a Medium post laying out details of her plan, Warren said it wouldn’t require a tax hike on the middle class — a question she’s increasingly been asked in recent weeks. Most of the cost burden would fall on businesses and the wealthy.

„A key step in winning the public debate over Medicare for all will be explaining what this plan costs — and how to pay for it,“ Warren said in her plan. „We don’t need to raise taxes on the middle class by one penny.“

It marks a significant contrast with her progressive rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has championed the proposal as well but said it would require increasing taxes middle class. He maintains it would be sharply offset by savings on the healthcare spending of Americans in the long run.

Warren is instead seeking to levy a range of new taxes on wealthy Americans, corporations and high-earning investors — and her plan calls for doubling her wealth tax to 6% on rich Americans with net worths over $1 billion.

At the center of Warren’s newly-unveiled plan is a proposal to shift the money that employers already pay for healthcare from private insurance companies to the government, totaling $8.8 trillion in ten years.

„We start by taking the money that employers are currently paying in the form of premiums to private insurance companies and have them pay it to Medicare instead,“ Warren wrote in a tweet. „We cover the remaining $11 trillion largely with taxes on big corporations, Wall Street, and the top 1%—and enforcing the tax laws we have now. Add in a targeted cut to a Defense Dept slush fund and that’s it.“

If enacted, Warren’s plan would amount to a sweeping expansion of government into a healthcare system criticized as costly with vast inequalities in care. The detailed proposal would abolish private insurance and redirect healthcare spending from employers, state governments, and households onto the federal budget.

Sanders and Warren — both of them leading Democratic candidates — have championed universal healthcare in the primary, a drastic turnaround within a party that shied away from fully embracing ambitious reforms requiring large tax increases — and avoid allowing Republicans to attack them as tax-and-spend liberals.

At the fourth Democratic debate earlier this month, the senator refused to say whether she’d need to raise taxes on middle-class Americans to pay for Medicare for All. She instead argued that costs would go down for those families under a single-payer system that would eliminate their co-pays and premiums.

„I will not sign a bill into law that does not lower costs for middle class families,“ she insisted.

That opened her up to attacks from moderate rivals who favor improving American healthcare one step at a time. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who supports a public option or „Medicare for all who want it,“ called Warren’s answer „extremely evasive.“

Warren’s non-answer came after months of vagueness on the issue. In June, she finally announced she was „with Bernie“ on single-payer. Since then, pressure mounted on her to deliver the details on funding.

There is a widespread belief among economists and political strategists that single-payer would require raising taxes on the middle-class, in addition to a host of other taxes. And the Democratic candidate will likely face skepticism from experts on the revenue and savings estimate she’s set.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently assessed the progressive initiative couldn’t be paid for by solely taxing the wealthiest Americans and would require additional funding from other sources.

The Warren plan instead relies on a cost model from the Urban Institute, a liberal think-tank, which found a Medicare for All plan that eliminates deductibles, premiums, and out-of-pocket spending while providing benefits such as dental, vision, and long-term care would add $34 trillion in new government spending over a decade.

But Warren contends her plan would be aggressive in cutting wasteful spending and negotiating lower prices for care, bringing the federal price tag down to $20.5 trillion in that period.

Sanders, on the other hand, has released a variety of options for how to finance the program, but recently refused to get into the specifics, saying he doesn’t believe he needs to release payment details anytime soon.