Biden would add a “public option,” which would allow individuals to opt into a government plan but would preserve the existing role for private insurers.

Like Biden, Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, favors the public option and coined the phrase “Medicare for all who want it” to describe the concept.

“He stole it,” Biden told reporters on his campaign bus in Iowa. Biden said he would have been criticized if he had copied someone else’s health plan.

“What would you have done to me? You’d have torn my ears off,” he said.