CHICAGO — Socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders called for America to “guarantee health care” in his Tuesday night speech to the Democratic convention — saying, “this is not a radical agenda.”
Sanders did not use the term, but he is a longtime advocate of “Medicare for all” — a term for single-payer health care — a policy that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, previously backed.
“We need to join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all people. It’s a human right, not a privilege,” Sanders said.
Harris supported single-payer health care when she sought to secure left-wing support in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
“We need to have Medicare for all,” Harris said in 2019.
“The idea is that everyone gets access to medical care, and you don’t have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require,” Harris said at the time.
She has since disavowed the position — though it has gained traction within the Democratic Party after long being viewed as a fringe position.
Opponents of single-payer health care point to long wait times and fewer options for care in other Western nations.
Sanders’ demand for the country to “guarantee health care” has been embraced in different forms by Democrats — including by expanding low-income Medicaid eligibility and by mandating that those who do not qualify purchase insurance under former President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care law. The Supreme Court in 2012 toppled the law’s so-called individual mandate.
Follow along with The Post’s live reporting of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Any attempts to implement single-payer health care would require overwhelming Democratic control of the Senate — where even adopting a public option under the individual mandate was blocked in 2010, including by skeptical Democrats.
Sanders also used his speech to call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza to raucous applause.
The senator called for the hostages to be released after demanding an end to the “horrific war in Gaza.”
Sanders, who ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016 and again in 2020, touted the accomplishments of the Biden administration, claiming the administration cut childhood poverty by 40%.
“When the political will is there, government can effectively deliver for the people of our country,” Sanders said.
Sanders says he looks forward to working with Harris and Walz to pass their agenda.
He claimed Trump and Vance would pass tax cuts for billionaires, cut Medicaid and cut regulations for polluters.
“My friends, we will not let that happen,” he said.
