Sanders: Health Care Should Be a Right Just Like Education

BARNICLE: “Senator, we live in a country now where the middle class the vast majority of the middle class live from paycheck to paycheck.” 
SANDERS: “That’s right.” 
BARNICLE: “If you believe, as I think you do, that insurance companies, insurance conglomerates are part of the financial system — what can be done in terms of breaking up insurance companies so that health care, health care policies, are reasonable, affordable and understandable?” 
SANDERS: “Mike, thanks for asking that question. I hope everybody knows that the United States is the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right, and that allows private insurance companies to make huge profits off of the health care system. So I think we’ve got to do two things, and I know, my conservative friends do not necessarily agree with me. First question we have to ask is, should health care be a right of all people or should it not? I think it should. We’ve decided public education is a right. You don’t have to be rich to go to high school. We should make that determination. Every other major country on Earth has done it. Second of all, if you’re going to do that, how do you do it in a cost effective way. That’s really what your question is about. And frankly, you’ve to get the private insurance companies out of health care. But it’s not only insurance companies, it’s the pharmaceutical industry!”