Calling Sen. Elizabeth Warren's, D-Mass., plans on how to pay for Medicare for All "controversial," South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg argued for his path forward on healthcare reform.
"Well, the math is certainly controversial," Buttigieg told ABC News' "This Week." "Again, there are variations in the estimates in the trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars. And we don't have to go there in order to deliver healthcare to everybody. My plan has a total cost over 10 years of $1.5 trillion. It can be fully paid for with a combination of rolling back the corporate Trump tax cut rate cut, and the savings we're going to get for allowing Medicare to negotiate.
"So, it's paid for. It works. And it avoids these two major problems, the math problem that I think the economists are arguing over this weekend, and the problem of kicking Americans off their private plans, when not everybody wants to go."
Buttigieg rejected Warren's healthcare reform plan as too costly and will be rejected by Americans – specifically unions who sacrificed income to secure bolstered medicare coverage.
"What is just not true is that hers is the only solution," Buttigieg told host George Stephanopoulos. "This my way or the highway idea, that either you're for kicking everybody off their private plans in four years or you're for business as usual, it's just not true.
"I'm proposing Medicare for all who want it. Now, if we do that, that's the biggest change in American healthcare in 50 years. The difference is, the way I would do it, you get to keep your private plan if you want to. I trust you to make that decision."
Warren released her pay-for plans on Medicare for All on Friday, amid criticism it will lead to a tax on the middle class. Buttigieg rejected that claim against his plan to make for Medicare for All who want it.
"Everything that we have proposed has been paid for, and we have proposed no tax increase on the middle class," he said. "We don't have to do it in order to deliver these healthcare solutions.
"There is a lot of money on the table from loopholes in the corporate tax system from the wealthiest among us who could and should pay more. And we don't have to look to the middle class in order to solve these problems."
Buttigieg is campaigning against pie in the sky Democrats who want taxpayers to pay for everyone's healthcare.
"In order to make sure that what we do is responsible, we've got to make promises we can actually keep," he said. "And we've got to be willing to raise the revenue in order to do it."