Senator and 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT) told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos Sunday morning that he would move for a “Medicare-for-all, single payer” health care system, though he acknowledged that this was not an immediately practical goal.
“We need to join the rest of the industrialized world,” Sanders said. “We are the only major country on earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people as a right, and yet we end up spending much more than they do.”
“So I do believe that we have to move toward a Medicare for all, single-payer system,” Sanders said, adding that he had “certainly voted for” the ACA. “It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but that certainly should be the goal.”
Sanders’ comments come after the Supreme Court “saved” Obamacare by ruling in favor of its federal subsidies last week, the latest and perhaps last of the law’s major existential threats.
The socialist senator from Vermont is enjoying a mini-surge in the early primary states of New Hampshire and Iowa, making him the only Democratic figure to currently pose a plausible challenge to prohibitive frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
