Bernie Sanders Wasn’t Always for Forced Medicare

I have always suspected that Bernie Sanders doesn’t actually care about Medicare for All (or to actually get anything done that he supposedly believes in). His professed disdain for insurance companies, his insistence that only a complete overthrow of the current health care system - the bathwater as well as the baby - is sufficient ‘reform’, and his chalkboard-clawing lectures about political revolution are all about one thing and only one thing: garner a cult following of people who aren’t read up on their very recent history.

Turns out, I was right. Here is Bernie Sanders, in 2009, torching then-Utah Senator Orrin Hatch for suggesting that he and the Democrats wanted a government-only plan for health care. Bernie happily cheerled for the public option, challenging Hatch that people should be able to choose between a private plan and a public one.

Great find by you. This clip is a little more clear.

Bernie Sanders wants to know why Hatch is afraid of a public option so people can have choice: a public plan or a private plan

Bernie Sanders is fighting for competition & thinks we need both private plans & public option pic.twitter.com/OS8fsbRg28

— ☇RiotWomenn☇ (@riotwomennn) October 17, 2019

So what changed? If you ask me, when Barack Obama was actually successful in enacting health care reform, Bernie became jealous of his accomplishments. Because like nearly everything he has ever argued for in his life, Bernie fully believed this would be an academic argument and would never become law. He wasn't counting on President Obama's tenacity on actually passing the thing.

So when he wanted to be president, he had to brandish his antiestablishment bona fides and he couldn't just be seen defending what he'd himself passionately advocated for just a few years earlier. So Obamacare was suddenly too little, inadequate, sellout. We suddenly needed forced Medicare.

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