Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Host a Q&A on the Secret GOP Health Care Bill (Video)
In a Facebook Live conversation streamed Monday, the senators took audience questions and examined the future of health care in the U.S.With all of the daily headlines about the Trump administration flooding your news feed, it can be dangerously easy for certain policy issues to get overlooked. Some argue that news of the GOP health care bill, the details of which are largely unknown, is getting lost in the shuffle.
Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren sought to bring the discussion straight to the people by hosting a live conversation about the GOP bill and taking audience questions.
“It is hard for me to understand how any member of the United States Senate thinks it is acceptable to go forward without any open debate on the Republican Senate proposal,” Sanders says at the start of the discussion. The reason for this lack of hearings, he contends, is “if you have something that stinks to high hell, that will decimate the American people, you want to keep it as secret as possible.”
The two senators, who are both on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, note that they—and the majority of their colleagues in the Senate—have no idea what is in the Republican health care plan, which is likely to receive a vote as early as June 29. The bill, the American Health Care Act, received widespread criticism while in the House, especially after the Congressional Budget Office said it would leave 23 million Americans uninsured.
Warren and Sanders discuss the importance of Medicaid, a program that Warren contends Republicans are “destined to cut” in their new bill. She adds that the GOP is making these cuts so that it can also reduce taxes for the wealthiest Americans.
“This thing should just be called for what it is: It is a ‘tax cut for billionaires’ bill,” Warren says. “It’s paid for out of everyone else’s hides.”
“We have to be part of the political process like we’ve never been before,” Sanders says to viewers. “You have got to act in an unprecedented way. Get involved in any way you can.”
Watch the full discussion and Q&A in the video above.
—Posted by Emma Niles
Your support matters…Independent journalism is under threat and overshadowed by heavily funded mainstream media.
You can help level the playing field. Become a member.
Your tax-deductible contribution keeps us digging beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that unearths what's really happening- without compromise.
Give today to support our courageous, independent journalists.
Media
No, it’s not. And pretending that it is obscures the real problem.
TD Original
For the chronically ill and people with disabilities, life on the streets and in shelters presents a unique set of challenges.
With Joe Biden’s primary victory imminent, the 2020 election increasingly looks like a battle not for America's future but for its past.
The Minnesota senator, best known for her questioning of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, says she is endorsing Joe Biden.
Its decision on an appeal of a lower-court ruling declaring part of the statute unconstitutional is unlikely to come before the election.
Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party and activist Jennifer Epps-Addison urge the left to focus on defeating corporate Democrats.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.