Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) criticized Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) signature “Medicare for All” health care plan ahead of Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential primary debate in Las Vegas.
While Reid said during an interview with ABC News’s Rick Klein that he thinks “the world of Bernie Sanders,” he called the progressive senator’s health care plan “impractical.”
“There’s not a chance in hell it would pass,” Reid said in the podcast interview.
Reid has spoken out about Medicare for All in the past, telling Vice last year he didn’t think the plan could pass and that Democrats should instead focus on strengthening the Affordable Care Act.
The longtime senator also spoke highly of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has touted a version of Medicare for All, and remarked about former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who will make his debut in the Democratic presidential primary debates in Las Vegas.
“One of the things that I feel very good about is that I discovered Elizabeth Warren, brought her to Washington when we had the Wall Street collapse,” Reid said. “She became head of the oversight committee and did a really good job … so I think the world of Elizabeth Warren.”
Of Bloomberg, Reid said: “He has, like a lot of candidates, a lot of warts and pimples.”
“But the one thing I have to say about him is no one in the country has done more in climate and guns than he has. So I respect him if for no other reason, those two things that he’s done I think have been wonderful,” Reid added.
Reid admitted in the ABC interview that he does have a favorite among the remaining candidates but refused to make an endorsement, saying that he preferred to “stay out of it.”
“I want the caucus to go unhindered by anything that I’m doing wrong,” he said.
Sanders, Warren and Bloomberg will join three other candidates on the debate stage Wednesday night in Las Vegas as the candidates battle for support ahead of the Nevada caucuses on Saturday.