Bloomberg on ‘Medicare for all’: ‘You could never afford that’

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg dismissed calls for a “Medicare for all” health care system on Tuesday, saying that such a plan would bankrupt the country.

Speaking to journalists at an event in New York, Bloomberg appeared to criticize several Democratic 2020 contenders who have expressed support for Medicare for all in recent months.

“I think you could never afford that,” Bloomberg says. “You’re talking about trillions of dollars.”

{mosads}”You can have Medicare for all for people who are uncovered,” he continues, “But … to replace the entire private system where companies provide health care for their employees would bankrupt us for a very long time.”

Bloomberg’s comments come as former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, a fellow billionaire, expressed interest this week in running as an independent presidential candidate in 2020, citing what he said was the Democrats’ shift too far to the left.

Schultz attacked Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-Calif.) plan to replace the private health care market with a Medicare for all system on Tuesday following Harris’s espousal of the proposal during a CNN town hall days before.

“That’s not correct, that’s not American. What’s next? What industry are we going to abolish next?” he asked on “CBS This Morning.”

Harris and other candidates have called for the U.S. to “move on” from private health care markets, blaming the current system for high drug prices in the U.S.

“The idea is that everyone gets access to medical care, and you don’t have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require,” she said Sunday. “Let’s eliminate all of that, let’s move on.”