 It is really encouraging to see that Medicare for all has never had this much momentum, at least in my lifetime. Like, we've never talked seriously as a country about the pros and the cons between, you know, a private versus single-payer healthcare system. And it's great. And the reason why we're winning this argument is because we have facts and statistics and studies on our side, whereas our opponents, like people to judge in Amy Klobuchar, all they have are corporate talking points and campaign contributions from the health insurance industry. So these are shills who are using hacky talking points that aren't landing and as more and more people vote during the 2020 primaries, it's really nice to see that they're siding with Bernie Sanders. Even if they don't support Bernie Sanders or vote for him, 60 to 70 percent in some instances are siding with Medicare for all. So anyone who's against it at this point has to admit that they don't actually care about all of the benefits that it brings. They're just trying to maintain the status quo because they want to keep the gravy train rolling. But we will continue to convince more people because we've got the data on our side. And I want to talk to you about two new studies that came out. One is a study from Yale. The other is a meta-analysis because it helps to further prove our point and it helps us to make not just a statistical and money argument, but a moral argument for Medicare for all. So the first study shows that Medicare for all would not just save money, but more importantly save thousands of lives. As Jason Lemon of Newsweek reports, the Medicare for all plan proposed by Democratic presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren would save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars each year and would prevent tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths on new study shows. The analysis conducted by researchers at Yale University, the University of Florida and the University of Maryland found that transitioning the United States to a single-payer healthcare system would actually save an estimated $450 billion each year with the average American family seeing about 2,400 annual savings. The research, which was published Saturday in the medical journal The Lancet, also found that Medicare for all would prevent about 68,000 unnecessary deaths per year. Quote, Our study is actually conservative because it doesn't factor in the lives saved among underinsured Americans which includes anyone who nominally has insurance but has postponed or foregone care because they couldn't afford the copays and deductibles. Allison Galvani, an author of the study and researcher at the Center for Infectious Disease Modelling and Analysis at the Yale School of Public Health, told Newsweek. Overall, the new research anticipates annual savings of about 13% in national healthcare costs while providing better healthcare access to lower income families. According to the study, about 37 million Americans do not have health insurance while an additional 41 million people do not have adequate healthcare coverage. Taken together, about 24% of the total population does not have healthcare coverage that meets their needs. Now, I just want to stop and reflect on the findings of this study. Put aside the savings because that's one thing. Medicare for All, according to this study, would save 68,000 lives per year. Per year. So now the question becomes, if you don't support Medicare for All, why don't you care about those lives? Why are those lives meaningless to you? Why are health insurance industry profits more important than those lives? And I really hope that on a debate stage we see Bernie Sanders ask this question because as they pretend to care about the lives of Americans and wanting everyone to have healthcare, this needs to be said for all the times that the DNC, Tom Perez, and members of the Democratic Party establishment claim that healthcare is a right. Well, how come you don't want it to be a right? If you don't believe healthcare should be free at the point of service, if you don't believe in Medicare for All, if you don't believe in doing what would save 68,000 lives per year, then you're indirectly responsible. You're indirectly responsible anytime someone who's uninsured or underinsured dies. And as they stated, this estimate is conservative because people who are uninsured oftentimes either go bankrupt or die because they have health insurance but it's just not good enough. So we have to make this moral argument and we've got to make it loudly and clearly because someone in this country who doesn't have health insurance, you know, for them to die, that is just unacceptable and we need to communicate to them that their lives are important, which is why we have to vote for Bernie Sanders who is the only person who we can trust on this issue. Now moving on to another study. This is a meta-analysis that shows there actually is a consensus among the experts who've crunched the numbers that Medicare for All would reduce overall healthcare spending. So as Diana Archer of the Hill writes, Christopher Kai and colleagues at three University of California campuses examined 22 studies on the projected cost impact for single-payer health insurance in the United States and reported their findings in a recent paper in PLOS Medicine. Every single study predicted that it would yield net savings over several years. In fact, it's the only way to rein in healthcare spending significantly in the United States. All the studies, regardless of ideological orientation, showed that long-term cost savings were likely. Even the Mercatus Center, a right-wing think tank recently found about 2 trillion in net savings over 10 years from a single-payer Medicare for All system. Most importantly, everyone in America would have high-quality healthcare coverage. Medicare for All is far less costly than our current system, largely because it reduces administrative costs. With one public plan negotiating rates with healthcare providers, billing becomes quite simple. We do away with three-quarters of the estimated $812 billion the U.S. now spends on healthcare administration. So I mean, there you have it. For everyone that's fear-mongering about the price tag of Medicare for All, why is it that they never speak to the fact that's been proven now by 22 studies that overall health spending will actually decrease under a Medicare for All system? Why do they never have an answer to that? Or, you know, whenever that question comes up, they change the topic. They say, well, you know what? Sure, I hear you there. You know, I see these studies about it saving lives, but why do you want to take away choice? Again, this is a talking point straight from the industry, and really it's difficult to find studies that debunk that. But what we can do to debunk that narrative is have one of the authors of the Medicare for All bill, or the author of the Medicare for All bill, the House version at least, Pramila Jayapal, go on national television and speak to it. And that she did because she actually responded to this stupid-ass choice argument, which I can't believe they're still using because it's so disingenuous, and she basically thoroughly dismantled it, and on top of that, she cited the Yale study and everything she did here was just brilliant because she is making a case for Medicare for All that is undeniable. Take a look. So what do you say to people who say, hey, I like my private insurance plan. I work for a large employer. It's relatively inexpensive. It's relatively a simple system. So what do you say to people who don't want to give up their private insurance plans? Well, I would just say, first of all, that nobody likes their private insurance plan. What they like is their doctor. And if you look at all the polling, when people are asked if they want to give up their private insurance, the support goes down a little. If you take the next question, which is if you could keep your doctor, but you were going to have to give up your private insurance plan, the support goes up even higher, including among independents and Republicans. So what people want is healthcare. And the current plans the employer provided healthcare, even if you're lucky enough to have that, you are seeing costs increase dramatically. It is why unions have come on board to Medicare for All, because they see the direct connection between wage stagnation and rising healthcare costs. And what choice do you really have if you have an employer covered plan? Your employer chooses the plan. Your insurance provider decides what benefits and what doctors and hospitals you get to see. That's why we have all the horrible surprise billing that's happening across the country. And if you lose your job, or if you're too sick to go to work, you've got no healthcare at all. So I think this is a red herring to say that these plans provide choice. What really provides choice is to guarantee insurance for all Americans so that whether you're in one job or the next, you keep the same plan, the same doctors, and you actually get to have lower costs and not be providing, you know, not be in that situation where you're dying. One more thing I want to say here, there was a fabulous study that just came out, published in the Lancet, very respectable medical journal, and it was done by the director of infectious diseases at Yale University. She estimates or those researchers estimate that Medicare for All would save over 68,000 lives and save $450 billion annually. Medicare for All who want it would actually cost us more and not cover everybody. That was absolutely brilliant. That was absolutely brilliant because when they talk about choice, when you're referring to our for-profit private health insurance system, what is this in actuality? It's the illusion of choice, right? Because even with a public option, I can technically choose between public or private insurance, but that doesn't actually increase choice where I want it when it comes to healthcare. I want to be able to see whatever doctor and go to whatever hospital or doctor's office I want to, but I can't do that even with a public option. Why? Because networks will still exist. There's still multiple payers in the system, right? So I'm limited in my options overall. But Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Joe Biden, they don't tell you that because they're paid to use these talking points that originate directly from the health insurance industry. And, you know, we've made a really powerful case for Medicare for All and we cite data and statistics over and over. We cite public opinion polls, but notice how they always have an answer for everything. They always move the goalpost. So when we tell them that it saves money and saves lives, then they'll say, well, what about choice when we explain why that's actually not even something that makes sense? It's the illusion of choice with our current system. And really, if you want choice, then you would opt for Medicare for All. Then they say, yeah, well, how do you get it done? Isn't it politically implausible? And would you be willing to compromise? Like, there's always some type of bullshit manufactured response because they just don't want Medicare for All. Because think about this. In mainstream media, they get advertising dollars from Big Pharma from the private insurance industry. Democrats, they take money from Big Pharma and these private health insurance companies. Republicans do too. So they have a vested interest. It helps them to not have or to argue against the system. It's an existential threat to their donors or advertisers. But what I liked is that Pramila Jaipal had another phenomenal response to the question about, you know, it being politically implausible and whether or not we would compromise. Unequivocally, she said, no. Because if we compromised, then that defeats the entire purpose of what we're trying to accomplish. If you want the cost-saving benefits of Medicare for All, you've got to get rid of the source that causes all of this instability in our health care system, the private insurance companies. Would Democrats like yourself accept an incremental application in pursuit of Medicare for All, perhaps just going after to your insulin point, the negotiation of pharmaceutical drug prices rather than just demanding this whole program wholesale? No, here's the problem, Bob. If you try to keep the private insurance companies in the marketplace, what you do is drive up costs. The whole problem with our health care system today is that it has started to put profits over patients. We have a system where 30% of our entire health care costs in this country are actually going to administration. And that is really ways to keep people from getting health care and provide big CEOs with huge paychecks. But it's not providing people with health care. So we have to fix that underlying problem, or you do not bring down costs and you do not provide universal care for everyone. Again, that was absolutely brilliant, and she really is one of the best, if not the best spokesperson for Medicare for All, because these private insurance companies, they are the underlying issue. When it comes to all the problems that we have in our system, the health insurance providers, they are the lowest common denominator. They're driving up the costs, right? And they're doing this because they prioritize profits, not health care. So if you don't get them out, then we're not solving any issues here. So compromising doesn't even make sense in that context. In context, if we want to deliver high quality, affordable health care to people, there's only one option. It's Medicare for All and acknowledge she didn't say this, but we've already compromised. We've already compromised. We should theoretically be opting for the true left-wing version of health care reform, which is a national health system like Britain has where we have publicly-owned doctors in hospitals or publicly-employed doctors in publicly-owned hospitals, more specifically, but we're opting for just government-run insurance, not socialized medicine, socialized insurance, because that is going to be efficient and we're already working with an existing framework, and that's Medicare. So she's just phenomenal here at making the case for Medicare for All, and it's so great to have her as an ally. Now, one last thing I want to leave you with is she made a really strong moral case for Medicare for All and stressed that our current system, we have to respond to it. We have no choice because people are dying because of it. And I think the thing here to think about is that we have a health care system that literally causes people to die. We have a health care system where people are paying 10 times more for insulin in the United States than they do in Canada. We have a health care system where 500,000 people every year file for medically-related bankruptcy because of medically-related costs. So this is untenable. The system as a whole will cost us $55 trillion over the next 10 years. So the question here becomes, why would you protect the status quo? And how do we make sure that every single person has universal care? In the last year, since I've introduced the bill, we have had a historic four hearings in the House of Representatives. We have over half of the Democratic caucus, including top leadership. We have 30 unions that have sponsored the bill, an incredible racial justice coalition, because people understand that we have to imagine a different kind of guaranteed government-provided insurance program that will allow everyone to get health care. No copays, private insurance premiums or deductibles. That was excellent. And we have to continue not just arguing on the basis of statistics and cost and public opinion polls, but we've got to make a moral case. Like even if the studies show that Medicare for All wouldn't be cheaper, that doesn't matter to me. I care more about lives because that's more valuable than money or the deficit, right? If we're not serving the people, if the United States government isn't looking out for the American people, then nothing else matters. People are dying. So we've got to make that case. We've got a site over and over again. 68,000 lives will be saved every single year, possibly more if you factor in the underinsured. And anyone who's against this reform, Medicare for All single payer, they're admitting tacitly that they don't care about those lives. Those lives are meaningless. They can keep dying because they want to protect the profits of their health industry donors. People to judge isn't trying to offer people more choice. He's making a political calculation and doesn't care that thousands of people will die every single year. So if you don't believe that we should save that 68,000 lives, then you're a bad person. The blood from them is on your hands. If they die, you have to live with this people and Amy Klobuchar because we can actually do something about it. We have studies that confirm not only is our plan cheaper and more efficient, but it saves thousands of lives. If you're against that, then you're a bad person, period, end of story. And I get that it seems like, you know, we're being hyperbolic to really make moral arguments like that. But that's really what it comes down to. Like if we had some type of invading force, if Russia invaded and was killing 68,000 Americans every single year, would we not take swift military action and not even question the cost? Of course. So why are we sitting back and letting 68,000 Americans die every single year when we know exactly what to do to stop that? Are their lives not important? So that's the case that we have to make. And we have to make it loudly because we're on the right side of history. And when we win one day, when we get Medicare for all codified into law, anyone who's arguing against it now will be not viewed kindly by history. I'll tell you that. Pete Buttigieg is one of them.