Elizabeth Warren released her Medicare for All financing plan today. The main purpose of the proposal appears to be to find a plan that you can message as “not increasing middle class taxes,” which is of course a nonsensical goal insofar, as Warren herself has said, what matters is middle-class health care costs, not whether you categorize those costs as premiums, taxes, or out-of-pocket expenses.

Nonetheless, bowing to the stupid media discourse on this, Warren put forward a financing proposal that is clearly unworkable and bad. The proposal is as follows:

1. Employers will be required to pay an “employer Medicare contribution” equal to 98 percent of their per-employee health care costs in the year prior to Medicare for All’s implementation. This will mean that initially some employers pay more than others since that is already the case in the status quo. But over time, each employer’s contribution will be gradually converged to average employer Medicare contribution until every qualifying employer is paying the same amount per employee.

2. Employers with less than fifty employees would be exempt from the employer Medicare contribution both initially and forever.

3. Independent contractors (and the companies who hire them) will also be exempt from the employer Medicare contribution both initially and forever.