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Opinion - Bernie Sanders: Medicare For All's Moment Is Here. Don't Back Down.
Those who make billions from our broken health care system will spend enormous amounts trying to divide us. But we cannot rest, and we cannot back down.Bernie Sanders
BuzzFeed Contributor
Posted on May 2, 2019, at 11:20 a.m. ET
Excerpts:
Now, because of these grassroots efforts, we are on the verge of a historic victory — and that reality is prompting a backlash from the powerful special interests that continue to reap hundreds of billions of dollars from the status quo. But our message must be clear: We must remember the lessons of history and refuse to back down.
This is not going to be an easy fight. To try to stop our movement’s momentum for Medicare for All, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries have recently formed a front group called the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future. In reality, this is a partnership to protect health industry profits. Through deceptive ads, the group’s goal is to try to persuade legislators to oppose Medicare for All, or divide and confuse us with weaker proposals.
This group’s members aren’t patients or consumers or people impacted by our current health care system — they are insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry’s lobbying group. These groups spent $143 million on lobbying in 2018 to try to preserve a system that is a disaster for millions of Americans, but that is making big money for CEOs. In 2017 alone, while Americans were getting crushed by higher premiums and prescription drug prices, the top 65 health care CEOs made $1.7 billion in compensation, and the 25 highest-paid CEOs in the pharmaceutical industry made roughly $440 million.
But let us be absolutely clear: These frantic attempts to derail our progress are a sign that we are winning — and that means we cannot rest, we cannot back down, and we cannot accept any substitute. This is a moment to say that we cannot accept any more Americans dying or going bankrupt for lack of medical care.
This is a moment to proudly declare that Medicare for All’s time has come.
In short, this is a moment to stand up, not stand down. If we do that, we will win.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/berniesanders2020/bernie-sanders-medicare-for-all
Bernie Sanders on how he would address defense spending as president
By Tara Golshan May 2, 2019, 7:00am EDT
Excerpts:
I think a lot of the budget is pushed by the military industrial complex. You have a handful of military contractors where CEOs make outrageous levels of compensation. John McCain, the late John McCain, talked about massive cost overruns. You have the only agency in government that has not completed an independent audit. So there is a lot to be looked at.
My Republican colleagues talk a lot about fraud and waste when it comes to programs for working people, lower-income people. They don’t look so much at the Pentagon, and I think that’s a place to look.
Fundamentally, why I am running for president is to get our priorities right. Our priorities are that we rebuild our infrastructure, that our kids have the ability to go to college regardless of income, that we address the crisis in affordable housing, and all the other crises — climate change, we have to deal with that, and it will take a lot of money. And we do not have to simply allow large defense contractors to become even wealthier.
That’s the way it works; when the president says, “I want this,” then fine. [If] the president says, “Look, I want you to start — for the first time — to take a hard look at the military budget and tell me why you think you need all this money and try to pare it down, because we have other needs,” then it becomes a whole other process.
https://www.vox.com/2019/5/2/18525580/bernie-sanders-plan-cut-military-spending
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