As reported by the Huffington Post’s Daniel Marans:
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ televised town hall on Tuesday night to promote single-payer health care, or “Medicare for all,” drew a live audience of about 1.1 million people ― all of whom viewed the event exclusively online….
Although Sanders has participated in more than one live health care debate on CNN, he told The Washington Post earlier this month that a large media network failed to respond to his inquiries about a broadcast solely on the topic of government-provided health care coverage.
But Sanders’ town hall, which was co-hosted by the left-leaning online video news outlets The Young Turks, NowThis and ATTN, demonstrated that a lengthy seminar on the complicated topic of single-payer health care can draw a crowd as large as many primetime cable news shows.
The auditorium itself was packed to capacity with some 450 attendees. And together, the live audiences on the senator’s Facebook and YouTube pages, the the three news sites and some other outlets that picked up the stream added up to about 1.1 million people...
Some of Sanders’ guests on Tuesday, including Richard Masters, the pro-single payer CEO of MCS, a Pennsylvania-based picture frame maker, and Dr. Claudia Fegan, chief medical officer for the Cook County Health and Hospital System in Chicago, were veterans of his legislative rollout and his Canada trip, respectively.
Other guests were new ― like Dr. Don Berwick, a Harvard medical school professor who led the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Obama administration ― reflecting the steady progress of Sanders’ cause into the mainstream...
When Sanders asked whether there was any good reason not to expand Medicare, Berwick replied, “No, there’s no reason. It’s just will.”
Berwick described how Medicare’s public mission and centralized bargaining power, as the insurer for some 55 million Americans, allowed him to easily troubleshoot problems like the over-sedation of nursing home patients.
“You can stand up for people,” Berwick recalled of his position at Medicare’s helm. “Why wouldn’t we do that for all Americans, not just people over 65?”
Sanders also stated during the video live stream that a majority of Americans favor single payer, yet it is not an issue covered by the mainstream media.
As we draw closer to 2020, it would seem this will be a defining point for both parties, as the current administration has been whittling down Obamacare and passing tax laws that we already know will be taking away health insurance for over 13 million people.
To which I say, please Democrats, be on the side of those people on this issue, be proponents of Single Payer/ Medicare for all.