Just want to bring this story to the community’s attention, and let the facts speak for themselves.
On three separate occasions this July, staffers for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) began preparing for the rollout of his new single-payer health care bill.
But every time they started to do so, Senate Republicans would improbably revive their push to repeal Obamacare — and Sanders’s team would postpone the launch of their “Medicare-for-all” campaign, according to aides to the Vermont senator.
Point: Sanders’ team prioritized saving Obamacare over their “Medicare-for-all” campaign.
“Bernie has repeated to us over and over and over again, ‘Our top priority is doing everything in our power to make sure 20 million people don’t lose their health care,’” said Ari Rabin-Havt, a senior adviser to Sanders.
Point: Sanders’ team prioritized saving Obamacare over their “Medicare-for-all” campaign.
“Our job today is to defend the Affordable Care Act,” Sanders said at several of his rallies this year. "Our job tomorrow is to create a Medicare-for-all single-payer system.”Point: Sanders’ team prioritized saving Obamacare over their “Medicare-for-all” campaign.
As the debate over the Senate Republican bill stretched from one month to four, and then from four months to seven, Sanders resisted the temptation to make his whirlwind tour across the country primarily about single-payer health care.
“Throughout this whole thing, there was always the temptation to pivot to make a stronger case for Medicare-for-all, rather than keeping the ACA at the center of our focus,” one aide recalled. “Bernie always insisted to us: ‘No, no, no.’”
Point: Sanders’ team prioritized saving Obamacare over their “Medicare-for-all” campaign.
I’ve tried to make this diary short and sweet, the article has much, much more. Those who have alleged in the past that Sanders is out to destroy the ACA as part of some quixotic quest to build a unicorn-like healthcare system appear to have been mistaken.