 The concept of medical bankruptcies, this idea that someone could actually die if they don't have health insurance, or maybe they have health insurance, but their insurance won't cover the cost of a particular procedure. This is all foreign to people who live in the UK, Australia, Canada. This is foreign to them. In fact, if you listen to David Dole of the Rational National, my brother from another mother, he will tell you that health care is something that he doesn't necessarily have to think about. Now, this isn't to say that these health care systems are perfect because they absolutely have their flaws. They have, you know, omissions of certain types of coverage, for example, eye care, dental care. However, when it comes to the United States, this really is an issue that is unique to us in the developed world. We are one of the few existing countries still that have people go bankrupt and die because they don't have health insurance. And that's absolutely insane. So if we win, if we have our way, we will move to a single payer Medicare for all system. We will eliminate private for-profit insurance companies. And, you know, we will go forward knowing that every single American is secure. With that being said, the current system that we have, it still has done so much wrong that all the damage that it caused can never be undone. Like if you have a child that died because he or she could not prove that they have health insurance, we will never be able to bring them back. And that's really painful to think about when I, you know, think about people like Amy Volella with her daughter, Shalyn. However, there are some areas where we can right the wrongs of what I hope will soon be the past. And that is medical debt. People will still have medical debt if we move to a single payer Medicare for all system. That's one area where we can take action and we need to take action because this is a huge, huge crisis. Prior to the ACA, the Commonwealth Fund found that 79 million Americans have problems with medical bills or medical debt. And it's often the number one reason why Americans file for bankruptcy. And a study conducted by Dr. David Himmelstein cited by Bernie Sanders correctly, so I might add, states that more than 500,000 Americans per year go bankrupt due to medical bills. So this is something that is absolutely a crucial issue that we've got to address. But thankfully Bernie Sanders has a plan for that. So what's his plan? Well, when it comes to existing medical debt, he's going to cancel it. Simple as that. So as Annie Greyer of CNN reports, the plan, which the Sanders campaign says would cancel $81 billion in existing past due medical debt and make changes to the 2005 bankruptcy bill, is not expected to be released in its entirety for another month. The proposal, which is still in the works separate from the Senator's Medicare for all plan and meant to address debt under the current system, does not explicitly state how Sanders will eliminate medical debt. But says under this plan, the federal government will negotiate and pay off past due medical bills in collection that have been reported to credit agencies. Sanders' announcement came during a healthcare-focused town hall in Florence, South Carolina in response to a question from an audience member on how he would address the issue. The campaign was still developing the details of the plan when Sanders hinted at its release Friday night, but released an outline Saturday after the Vermont senator was asked about the issue directly. A woman at the town hall stood up and asked, is there anything in your plan that would actually work for people that are drowning right now for their medical debt? We're looking at that right now, Sanders responded. In another piece of legislation that we're going to be offering, we will eliminate medical debt in this country. I mean, just stop and think for a second. Why should people be placed in financial duress? For what crime did you commit? You got a serious illness? That is not what this country should be about. So yet again, this is incredibly important and it's forward-thinking. And one of the main criticisms that I had of Bernie Sanders back when he was talking about free college was that, look, this is great. Going forward, we need to make sure that future generations do not accumulate the type of debt that millennials have. However, there's still 1.5 trillion in debt currently that is plaguing an entire generation. It's harming the aggregate economy. So let's boost the purchasing power of millennials and start talking about student loan debt cancellation. Bernie did that. And now this is another issue where even if you make Medicare for all going forward, that will be a huge substantial improvement and save lives and stop medical bankruptcies. But that doesn't automatically erase the debt that people have acquired under our current system and hopefully soon to be gone system. Bernie Sanders has a plan for that and he has a plan for everything. So I think it's time for him to just straight up steal that slogan from Elizabeth Warren because think about this. In the span of the last week and a half, he proposed a fully fleshed out Green New Deal proposal that costs 15 trillion but pays for itself within 15 years. He proposed a Workplace Democracy Act that would save and expand unions. He proposed sweeping criminal justice reform and now he's hinting at legislation that will cancel medical debt. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate that is fundamentally rethinking our entire system. And I absolutely love that if this primary comes down to a race between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren that they're having to one up each other with regard to policy. One puts out a policy proposal, the other is forced to respond and so on and so forth. This is exactly what candidates should be doing during the primary process. Like I don't care about these idiotic arguments about electability. I mean that matters but whoever proposes the best policies that's who you should vote for. Not, you know, vote on whatever subjective measure you think makes a candidate more electable. That's just a fool's game. Primaries are about competition. Primaries are about challenging the candidates to put up the best policy proposals and for Bernie Sanders to run this campaign that has been incredibly dynamic. Not only is he silencing the critics who say, oh well, you know, he's saying the same thing that he was saying four years ago. He's actually proposing policies that save people's lives and even if he's not going to be able to even pass 10% of his agenda if he's elected president. The fact that he's using his name recognition and the enormous platform that he's amassed to elevate these issues that nobody's talking about is incredibly, incredibly important. And I am not under the illusion that Bernie Sanders is going to get everything passed and change the system himself. But what Bernie Sanders can do, what we can hope for essentially with term limits is that he puts us on a new trajectory. He is a revolutionary figure like Ronald Reagan was but instead of having a corporatization of America where you just essentially do trickle down economics, you have a left wing revolution where you propose policies that are so popular that they become the new status quo that your political ideology becomes the new status quo and any Republican or corporate Democrat for that matter that speaks out and questions it, they are the ones who are marginalized now. But as this primary weight is on, I get more and more hopeful that we actually could see some real systemic change in this country. But as my hope builds, you know, I'm also getting worried because Biden has to fall quicker. Elizabeth Warren is catching up with Bernie Sanders. And if you're not really politically savvy like viewers of this program, you might not necessarily see the difference between Bernie and Warren. So this is incumbent on all of us, not just political commentators, but people, people who are voting for Bernie Sanders to educate your peers about Bernie Sanders and explain why we don't just need to rewrite the rules of the game, we need to blow up the game itself. And Bernie Sanders yet again is demonstrating he's going to do that. He's the only candidate that wants to change the game. And that's what we need because it's not just about American politics. This is about saving the planet. But I'm not going to go down that route. All I know is this is a great policy proposal. And I absolutely think that Bernie Sanders is crushing it to say that he is running a better campaign than he did in 2016. If you would have told me that I would be saying this in 2019, I would think that's impossible. He can't really improve that much. But I mean, he has improved substantially. 2019 Bernie is exponentially better than 2015 Bernie. And it's nice to see a candidate improve for the better and not just get exponentially worse with time, which is almost always the case. But he's Bernie Sanders is a different type of politician. He's incredibly unique and we may never get another Bernie in our lifetime. So cherish this moment. Fight for Bernie Sanders because this might be our only shot to elect someone who is a transformative figure like Bernie Sanders.