“Given that the majority of the country supports Medicare for All, why has the majority of the Democratic party rejected the idea?” Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discuss this issue.
Transcript:
Our next question comes from @TheAtomicSultan who asks, “Given that the majority of the country supports Medicare for All, why has the majority of the Democratic party rejected the idea? My guess would be the cost of it on the federal government ($3.26 Trillion annually.)” I think the reason we’ve seen so many Democratic hold outs on this particular issue is because up until, what was it, a week and a half ago, we didn’t know that 70% of the public supported this. At least on paper, we didn’t know that, or they did not. I can’t say we, because they don’t go out there and talk to people. That’s the problem. They’re not doing their job as politicians, as candidates, and going out there and talking to people. They’re talking at them.
Any time there’s a rally like what Donald Trump gives, Democrats to the same thing. They’re talking at the people, not to them. I think that’s the big difference, and I think that’s a big difference of what Bernie Sanders has been doing. Yeah, Bernie goes out and does speeches, but you can also find just as many if not more instances of Bernie Sanders walking around and speaking to people, talking to them like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She is talking to the people. [inaudible 00:01:18], talking to the people. Andrew Gillum, Democratic candidate for governor in the State of Florida, talking to people. That’s the big difference here.
Until more of the Democratic Party goes out there and talks to people, and understands oh, they want this, and this, and this, I can do that, they’re not going to get on board with it. They can look at poll, after poll, after poll showing that both Republicans and Democrats support Medicare for all, but until they’re confronted with it on the campaign trail by somebody coming up and saying, “Hey, I’m not going to vote for you if you’re not going to at least try for this thing. We need it. Health care in America is broken. You can fix it, and you’re not going to get my vote, if you’re not going to attempt to fix it.”
Until they hear that, until they see it face to face, until they get confronted with it to the point that the amount of money they’re taking in from the pharmaceutical companies, and the insurance companies, and the hospital corporations, until the public pressure defeats all that money, you’re not going to get enough Democrats on board with it even though a majority of people support it. Yes, it has a hefty price tag, but in the end it’s actually going to save us money because it’s still technically less than we spend each year as a country on health care.
