Senator Bernie Sanders appeared on CBS News this morning to promote his book about ‘fighting oligarchy’ and claimed that the American healthcare system is broken, but neither he nor the hosts ever mention who broke it.
How did we get here? It was through Obamacare, which was made law by Democrats on a party line vote. It is entirely their fault.
Sanders is out here saying that the Affordable Care Act failed to make healthcare affordable and no one even thinks to mention this fact.
Bernie tries to spin this by saying that Republicans are allowing thousands of Americans to die, but never addresses the simple fact that Obamacare has been a total failure.
Transcript by Curtis Houck on Twitter/X:
Dokoupil: “Leader Thune over the Senate has said the health care issues will come to a vote if you open the government first. He can’t guarantee the outcome but he’ll get the vote. Why is that no good?”
Sanders: “Well, I’ll tell you why it is no good. The current health care system is broken. It’s dysfunctional. We spend twice as much per person as the people of other country, 85 million uninsured, we don’t have enough doctors, nurses, dentists, et cetera. It is a broken system. What Trump did in his big beautiful bill is to throw 15 million low income and working class people off the health care they currently have by massive cuts in Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. You know what studies show, guys? Let’s talk about this. Studies show that, when you throw 15 million low income and working class people off health care, 50,000 people a year — a year — will die unnecessarily. They don’t have the money to go to a doctor, they have a chronic illness, they will die. On top of that, all over the country, in my state of Vermont, all over the country, people right now are receiving notices from their insurance companies, their premiums are going to go up by 20 percent — by — by double.”
Dokoupil: “So open the government and vote on it. Make the case.”
Sanders: “Really? No, and let 50,000 people die after Trump vetoes the legislation if the House doesn’t deal with the legislation? You know what’s going on right now in the House? The Speaker of the House, Mr. Johnson, has given his people a five-week vacation. They’re not even in Washington, D.C. before I vote on a bill that will right now allow 50,000 people to die unnecessarily, I want it absolutely clear that that will not happen, period.”
Watch the exchange below:
CBS’s Tony Dokoupil absolutely cooks Bernie Sanders over the government shutdown and, when Sanders doubles down and insists Republicans are murdering 50,000 people a year if the ObamaCare subsidies expire, calls him out for not wanting to “make the case” and let the chips fall…… pic.twitter.com/GmjxnPpdDA
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 20, 2025
Bernie Sanders is completely dishonest in this argument. Leaving the failures of Obamacare out of this conversation is purely political and it’s being done for such obvious reasons.