On Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” on Monday, host Jon Stewart stated that Democrats are in a position where “we’ve shut down the government to protect subsidies for an insurance marketplace that funnels $800 billion a year into the pockets of all these insurance companies.”
Stewart asked, “[W]hat Democrats find themselves in a place is, we’ve shut down the government to protect subsidies for an insurance marketplace that funnels $800 billion a year into the pockets of all these insurance companies. Have Democrats boxed themselves into a corner fighting for a system that, ultimately, to get to the thing you want, that I think the American people want, they’re going to have to abandon?”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) responded, “Yes.” And stated that there will be dire consequences to ending the subsidies, the healthcare system is the right one to defend for today, and the right move long-term is to move to single-payer because the current system is “designed to make huge profits for the insurance companies and the drug companies, period.”
After the discussion turned to college education, Stewart said, “[T]his gets to the Democratic solutions have never been to directly provide, it’s always been a subsidy to a middleman. But, what happens is, when the government promises endless funds to insurance companies or private universities, without any cost controls — and Trump seems to understand this — prices rise far beyond the rate of inflation. And we’ve seen it in tuition and we’ve seen it in pharmaceutical and we’ve seen it health care. So, my question is, will Democrats recognize the poison pill that they’ve often placed into well-intentioned policy?”
Sanders responded, “Right. What they end up doing is coming up with very complicated proposals. You make $48,964, you will get this thing, you make a dollar more, you’re finished.”
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