Sanders: Medicare for All ‘More Cost Effective,’ Reduces Bureaucracy

>> Next questioner is a physician — doctor.
>> I wanted to ask you to articulate the benefits of your health care plan of the American people.
SANDERS: "I have believed my entire adult life that health care is a right of all people. I know secretary Clinton is suggesting that if we go from the affordable care act where we are today, children will lose the chip program. Elderly people lose medicare. This is what I believe, every other country on Earth as you may know. Has a national health program of one kind or another. Right now in America, we have 29 million people who have no health insurance at all. We have medicare, which needs improvement. What I believe simply stated is that program should be expanded to all Americans. When we do that, we make our health care system much more cost effective, we end a whole lot of administration. If you are a physician, you spend half your life arguing with the insurance companies. And you have people filling out forms. The reason that we are so much more expensive than other countries is that we have huge bureaucracy in the health-care system, and we pay much much too much for prescription drugs. To answer your question, I believe that we move in a medicare — to a medicare for all health care system. More cost effective, covers everybody."
>> Are you worried? Are you worried about the transition, is that the genesis of your question?
>> What would be your concern?
SANDERS: "Well, I’ve heard a number of other candidates say, we’re going to repeal ObamaCare, we’re going to do this. We have a current system. I don’t see how you make the leap from where we are to where somebody else wants to. Somebody who has spent my entire life fighting for universal health care, I assure you that we’re not going to leave anybody out. The point is to cover more people. One of the problems, and you can disagree with me or not. We talk about 90% of Americans having insurance. That’s a good thing. We made progress on the affordable care act. But as you well know, we got millions of people in this country who may have health insurance, but they are under insured with high deductibles and payments. Let me make a guess, there are people who walk into your office who are much sicker than they should have been, because they didn’t go into your office. That’s pretty crazy stuff, I want every American to be able to walk into the doctor’s office when they should. I don’t want to see one out of five Americans not being able to afford the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe. I don’t want to see elderly people cut their pills in half, and I don’t want to see at the same time, the three major drug companies in this country make $45 billion in profits, while so many people cannot afford their medicine."