Summary

This chapter is used to outline Sanders’ opinions on a workable health care system in the U.S. based on a single-payer Medicare program. In recent decades, and especially since the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, health care has been a hot button issue in American politics. In this chapter, Sanders not only defines what is wrong with the current health care system, but offers what he deems a workable plan for a single payer universal health care system.

At the essence of Sanders’ argument is the idea that health care is a right, not a privilege or a commodity. Health care is a basic human need that does not discriminate by race, gender, or social status. He criticizes insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry for allowing the desire for profit override their original directive of maintaining the nation’s...