I’m not quite a rockstar, just a Senator from Vermont. Let me thank all of you, not
only for being here today but for your work over the years for human rights; and there
is no human right I know that is more important than to say loudly and clearly: “Health
care is a right of all people, not just a right or privilege.” And Roseanne is absolutely
right, all of the pundits always tell us what we cannot accomplish until the day after we
accomplish it. That’s been the story of struggle: civil rights struggle, women’s
rights struggle, gay rights struggle, disability rights struggle. Can’t be done. Can’t
be done. Can’t be done. But I am here to tell you that what can be done is that we
end the international embarrassment of the United States of America, our great country,
being the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people
as a right. And together, we are going to end that embarrassment.
We all know the tragedy that exists when people have no health insurance or when they are
underinsured. The nurses here know it perhaps better than anyone else. You talk to nurses
and you talk to doctors and you know that every single year thousands of our fellow
Americans die because they don’t go to the doctor when they should. Then the doctor and
the nurse say ‘well why didn’t you come in when you were first sick?’. And they
say ‘well, I didn't have any health insurance. I didnt have any money. Or maybe I did have
insurance but my deductible was so high I just couldn’t afford to take out the money
out of our pocket.’ That should not be the case in America. When you are sick, you should
go to the doctor. When you go to the hospital, you should not
come out in bankruptcy. Now all of us know, and we’re here today to mark the 50th anniversary
of Medicare; one of the most successful programs in the history of the United States. And let's
remember, let's never forget, the situation before Medicare was established. And that
situation was that if you were old and sick and poor, you had no options. You died or
you suffered. And Medicare has gone a long, long way in addressing that issue today, thanks
to Medicare. 51 million seniors and people with disabilities have health insurance coverage.
The senior poverty rate has plummeted. And seniors are living healthier and longer lives.
We must never, ever go back to the days when older Americans could not get the healthcare
they needed because they could not afford it. We are not going back. When I hear politicians
like Jeb Bush and other talking about phasing out Medicare -- that ain’t going to happen. And when
I hear other politicians talking about raising the retirement age and social security, they
think workers should be working to 68, 70 years of age, that’s not gonna happen. We’re
going to expand social security benefits. We’re not gonna cut them. Brothers and sisters,
the time has come. The time has come to say that Medicare is an excellent program for
senior citizens in this country. But the time has come also to say that we need to expand
Medicare to cover every man, woman, and child as a single-payer national healthcare program.
And that is exactly the legislation that we will be offering in the very near future.
We must move towards a healthcare system which is based on providing quality care to all
of our people, rather than worrying about the profits of the insurance companies. We
must move toward a healthcare system which ends the absurdity of Americans paying by far
the highest prices for prescription drugs in the world. We got doctors all over this
country writing prescriptions. Working people can’t afford those prescriptions because
drug companies just manufacture these prices, and we are going to negotiate through Medicare
prices for pharmaceuticals. So let me just conclude by saying this: healthcare is an
issue that touches every man, woman, and child in this country. We all get born; we all
die; we all get sick. And as a moral society, our job is to come up with two basic approaches.
Number one: do we believe that everybody should be entitled, as a right, to health care?
And if we believe that, our next issue that we have to resolve is: how do we provide that health care to
all people in a cost effective way? Do we want insurance companies and drug companies
to be ripping off the system? Do we want executive CEO’s of insurance companies to be making
millions and millions of dollars in salaries? Drug companies to be making outrageous profits
when people can’t afford their products? So we are going to address those two issues.
We are gonna say loudly and clearly that every person in this country will have health care.
We’re gonna do it in a cost effective way and that is a Medicare for all, single-payer program.
Thank you all very much.