Some Big News on Our Medicare-for-All Bill | Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution

Alan -

I have some important news to share with you:

Today — along with 15 co-sponsors — I am officially introducing our Medicare-for-all, single-payer health care legislation that will guarantee health care as a right for every single man, woman and child in the United States of America.

The last time I introduced this bill, it lacked a single co-sponsor.

Today, we have 15.

I want you to know the names of each and every Senator who is standing with us today, then sign my online card thanking them for joining this fight.

Here is the list:

Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)
Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ)
Senator Al Franken (D-MN)
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA)
Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM)
Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Senator Ed Markey (D-MA)
Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI)
Senator Tom Udall (D-NM)
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

But it gets better.

Over the past two months, more than 500,000 people across the country have joined them as citizen co-sponsors of our bill. And in the House of Representatives, for the first time ever, a majority of the Democratic members have signed onto John Conyers’s Medicare-for-all legislation.

There is no doubt about it, momentum is on our side.

It was not long ago that the idea of Medicare for all was dismissed and ridiculed by the corporate media and political establishment of this country. Today, a strong majority of Americans understand that it is the responsibility of the federal government to provide health care for all.

But we still have a long way to go.

Because the truth is, the insurance companies and drug companies in this country are extraordinarily powerful and they are not going down without a fight. They have obscene amounts of wealth and have used that money to protect a dysfunctional system that allows them to make billions in profits while leaving far too many Americans behind.

But in my view, the people of this country have had enough of the greed and recklessness of these industries.

We understand that it is a moral outrage that the United States is the only nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care as a right to all of its people.

We believe it is a national emergency that 28 million of our sisters and brothers lack health care coverage and that many more are underinsured with high deductibles and copayments.

We are tired of going to the pharmacy to get medicine we need and the price triples for no other reason than because the drug companies now have the right to charge as much as they like. Unbelievably, one out of five adults under the age of 65 in this country who gets a prescription from a doctor cannot afford to get it filled.

The American people are sick and tired of a health care system that spends twice as much per capita as countries around the world but has worse outcomes. All while the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry reward their executives with outrageous compensation packages.

All of us get sick.

All of us need medicine.

All of us have accidents.

All of us need good quality health care.

In my view, the function of a rational health care system in this country should be to provide quality care for everyone in a cost effective way, not to make health industry CEOs richer or drive up stock prices on Wall Street.

Even with growing support in Congress, we are still taking on much of the political and financial establishment in this fight. But when we are united, when we stand together, we are more powerful than they could ever imagine.

Sisters and Brothers: In this pivotal moment in American history, let us lead our country forward to guarantee health care as a right and not a privilege. This is a struggle whose time has come. This is a struggle not just about health care but about the heart and soul of our country, about what we stand for as a people.

Please remember that when we stand together and do not let allow demagogues to divide us up by race, religion, national origin or sexual orientation, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish.

That is the political revolution.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

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