"Hillary Clinton is now attacking single-payer health care as a way to bring Bernie down. “Bernie Sanders has called for a roughly 9-percent tax hike on middle-class families just to cover his health-care plan,” said Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon today.
The Clinton campaign must be referring to single-payer legislation Bernie introduced in 2013, which was to be paid for by a 2.2 percent income tax across the board and a 6.7 percent payroll tax for employers. But even assuming that payroll tax increase would be paid for by workers, calling it a “9 percent tax hike” leaves out the savings average workers would get from a single-payer system. Because single payer would be far cheaper than today's private-insurance system, average workers would still come out far ahead of where they are today.
What really concerns me about Hillary’s tactic here is that this kind of faux analysis makes it harder for any future president – including Hillary Clinton herself, if she’s elected – to propose a single-payer healthcare system."