 A lot of the presidential candidates are being asked to clarify their position on Medicare for All. And they're being asked to clarify specifically what they do about health insurance companies. Would you or would you not get rid of them? Now Kamala Harris at her scene in town hall, she said, yes, we should get rid of them. Which was the correct answer, but less than 24 hours later, she backpedaled. And we're seeing more and more presidential candidates who purport that they support Medicare for All, walking away from this standard position that we need to get rid of private health insurance companies, which is problematic because if you support Medicare for All truly, then you have an interest in wanting to get rid of private health insurers. Now I get that you're running for president and you don't want to ruffle any feathers, you don't want to invite all of these right wing attacks. But if you support Medicare for All, then you've got to explain it. And part of the process in pitching Medicare for All is explaining that if we move to Medicare for All, a single payer type system, there will no longer be a need for private health insurance companies. Now Bernie Sanders was recently on MSNBC, and he was talking to Chris Hayes. And he wasn't necessarily asked about whether or not he wanted to get rid of private health insurance companies. Instead, he just said it himself. And it was absolutely badass and what happened afterwards may be incredibly confident in his ability to push not for some half measure, but for Medicare for All specifically. Take a look. There's lots of people running on Medicare for All, but there's been some interesting sort of debate about what it means. And there's sort of two different ways that people are talking about it now. One is what you've talked about a four year phase and you lower it and you get Medicare for All. The other is the idea of sort of a Medicare buy-in, right? So you don't say everybody's in the Medicare system. You just say everyone has the option to, you can actually buy in at Medicare rates. That's called Medicare for America. There's a bill with that name in the house. That is polling very well right now, 51 to 30 percent, whereas the sort of more traditional Medicare for All that you support is even. What do you think about that as an alternative? Why not sort of slide towards the system in an optional way? Because ultimately we have to recognize that the current system is incredibly dysfunctional and wasteful. Its goal is to make profits for the insurance companies and the drug companies. You are not going to be able in the long run to have cost-effective universal healthcare unless you change the system, unless you get rid of the insurance companies, unless you stand up to the greed of the drug companies and lower prescription drug costs. That's the only way that you could provide quality care to all people. I look at healthcare, Chris, the same way as I look at public education, the same way I look at police protection, fire protection, all people get it regardless of their income. It is publicly funded. That is the most cost-effective way to provide healthcare to all. This is exactly what I want to see. Because if you allow these health insurance, these for-profit private health insurance companies to exist within our Medicare for All system, understand what you are inviting. You are allowing them to corrupt our single-payer system. Because these for-profit systems are going to be greedy. They're going to want a bigger piece of the pie and they're going to be bribing politicians and get them to chip away and privatize portions of our one-day, hopefully single-payer system, which is something that you don't want to do. So the best thing we can do if we want single-payer and we want to protect single-payer is get rid of the private insurance companies. It's not that hard to say that. And Bernie did say it. But expectably what happened was right-wingers decided to attack him. And as a kind of gotcha, the RNC posted a clip of his interview with Chris Hayes saying Bernie Sanders on eliminating private health insurance, get rid of the insurance companies. And his response, rather than backing away, like everyone else, was to say, You're goddamn right. That was brilliant. And if you support Medicare for All, if that's essentially your number one issue, Bernie is your candidate. Because he's the only one who planted his feet firmly in the ground and demanded Medicare for All. Whenever somebody tries to offer some type of half-measure, he repeats. Medicare for All. If it's not Medicare for All, he sends it back. He's been consistent on this, and he's the strongest on this, because when he talks about Medicare for All, he's unequivocally saying Medicare for All very clearly. And I want you to think about what's currently happening. So we've seen proposals such as Medicare for America by Beto O'Rourke. We've seen Medicare for All who wanted from Pete Booty Judge. We've seen Medicare for All from the so-called Center for American Progress. So we've got to be savvy enough to recognize what's happening and how the establishment is trying to play kick-ass. We're demanding chocolate cake, and they're putting sprinkles on a turd, and they're trying to sell that to us as chocolate cake when we can smell the shit. So acknowledge that this is what they're doing here. That's a horrible analogy, by the way, but just why did I pick that? Just acknowledge that that's essentially what's happening. They're trying to take the word Medicare, and they're inserting it into their non-Medicare for All policies to get us to accept anything that would protect the profit incentive in the for-profit health insurance industry. But what Bernie did here was he just said very clearly and loudly, go fuck yourself. Now of course I'm paraphrasing, he didn't say that, but he's saying we're not going to accept that health care in America is going to be driven by profit, because health care, the health industry in America should be motivated to cure sick people, to get people the help that they need. You shouldn't be profiting when people's lives are at risk, when that poses a conflict of interest. Because I want my doctor to treat me full stop. I don't want them to have to worry about whether or not my insurance company will cover a particular procedure, and really we're the only people in the modern industrialized world that do have to worry about this. Everyone else in the UK and Canada, they've moved on to other progressive issues. We're still having to argue for something that is a policy everyone else takes for granted essentially, and it's not acceptable anymore. When we say Medicare for All, when you say Medicare for All, if you're running for president, then mean it. And part of that means you accept the reality that having a single-payer system means that, yes, the ultimate goal is to do away with these for-profit health insurance companies. They should be done away with, because if you think that they should exist, then you're essentially buying into this notion that I believe death panels should determine whether or not someone gets care and not their doctors. Someone accept the premise, reject it from its root, and acknowledge that Medicare for All would in fact involve us moving beyond for-profit health insurance companies. And that means getting rid of them. Bernie gets this, and that's why Bernie is the best on this issue by a mile and a fucking half. Nobody comes close to Bernie on this issue. I was worried that a lot of politicians who are running for president in 2020 initially would be able to dupe the left into thinking that they support Medicare for All, but they've shown within a couple of months of the primary that they're not serious about Medicare for All. Even Elizabeth Warren is not doing great on this particular issue. So if you want Medicare for All, then the only person who you can be confident in that will fight for Medicare for All itself is in fact Bernie Sanders. And he made that crystal clear in this interview and standing by the statement he made and not running away from it. That's important. That says something.