Hillary Clinton Proposes Middle-Class Tax Cut Tied to Health Care

MEMPHIS — Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday proposed a tax credit for families and individuals who face excessive and unexpected health care costs, the first part of multipronged approach to giving middle-class Americans tax relief that she will unveil in the coming days, according to her campaign.

The proposal, which would provide a tax credit on health costs of up to $2,500 for an individual and $5,000 for a family, comes as Mrs. Clinton has sought to use the issue of taxes on the middle-class to draw a distinction between her proposals and those of her main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Speaking at a rally at LeMoyne-Owen, a historically black college here, Mrs. Clinton introduced the tax credit and, without evoking Mr. Sander’s name, told the crowd, “You deserve a raise — not a tax increase, and I’m not going to stand for that.”

Mrs. Clinton has accused Mr. Sanders of supporting policy proposals that would essentially amount to a tax increase for middle-class families, specifically pointing to his plan for a single-payer health care system that he bills as “Medicare for All Americans.”

The Clinton campaign points to a 2013 proposal for a single-payer health care system Mr. Sanders proposed in the Senate as evidence that his plan would increase taxes on millions of Americans. Michael Briggs, a spokesman for the Sanders campaign, told Politico, “On Medicare for all, the middle class would be far better off because it would save taxpayers money.”

Mrs. Clinton has already proposed extending the American Opportunity Tax Credits to help make college more affordable. In Iowa on Sunday, she will present another round of proposals for tax cuts, paid for, in the words of a campaign aide, “by a set of proposals Clinton supports in order to ensure the wealthiest of Americans pay their fair share.”

“We need to take care of people who are left out and left behind,” Mrs. Clinton said in Memphis before she headed to her next event in Nashville.

Tennessee holds its Democratic primary on March 1, and her swing through here was part of Mrs. Clinton’s emphasis on the states with primaries after the earlier contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.