-You've been on the show
many times in the studio.
You are our first remote guest
Thank you so much
for making the time.
You are in Vermont right now
correct?
-Yep, I'm in my home
in Burlington, Vermont.
-It must often be nice to be
back out of D.C., in Vermont
But obviously the circumstance
are a little different
right now.
How have you been balancin
both doing your Senate wor
and your campaign?
-With much difficulty.
It is a very, very strange tim
for me.
I think it's a strange tim
for the American people.
The campaign has been
radically changed.
We can't do rallies.
We can't go out
and do door-to-door stuff,
which is what we love to do.
As a senator, I can't meet
in person with my staff.
So it is -- you know,
it's a strange moment for me
I think for you,
normally we would not
be doing the show
from your home.
It's a strange, unprecedente
moment for the American people
-One of the moments
or one of the unique thing
about this moment is how it'
making a lot of people
re-evaluate the current system
in healthcare.
Obviously Medicare for all
is the issue
people most associate you with
Could you just speak to ho
this moment would be different
if we had a system like Medicare
for all and the shortcomings
of the current system
we're living with?
-Well, thank you for askin
that question, Seth.
And I think the answer
is fairly obvious.
Right now, as we speak, millions
of people are losing their jobs.
And some 87 million people
already did not have
any health insurance
or are underinsured.
So people are sitting home
right now, scared to death
that somebody in their famil
is going to come down
with the virus.
They don't know how they wil
even pay for the treatment
they receive let alone any other
problems their families have
Second of all, people are asking
how does it happen when we spend
twice as much per person o
healthcare as any other nation
And yet our public health system
is so weak, so incredibly weak
that we have
doctors and nurses right now
who don't have the masks,
don't have the gloves,
don't have the gowns,
the protective equipment
they need to keep themselves
safe and do the work
that they have to do.
A Medicare-for-all system is
designed to provide quality care
for all to do preventive wor
in order to prepare
for some types of pandemics,
not simply to make huge amount
of money
for the insurance companie
and the drug companies.
-This, again, moment in time
led to a bipartisan bill
being passed, a bill
that the President signed.
You still used your time
on the Senate floor
to be a bit sarcastic toward
your Republican colleagues
We do enjoy your sarcasm.
We feel like it's when
your Brooklyn comes out.
You were referring to the fact
that some across the aisle
felt that the bill was being too
generous to the less fortunate
to poorer Americans.
In those moments of sarcasm,
is that -- is that just maskin
a simmering rage you feel when
your colleagues react like that?
-Absolutely.
Look, you have folks
in the Senate,
my Republican colleagues,
who voted for a trillion dollars
in tax breaks for the 1%
and large corporations.
And yet in this stimulus package
where we fought to make sure
that we expand unemployment,
by the way, to a lot more people
than previously
were eligible for it,
and then what we said is
that over a four-month perio
in this terrible time,
when people are so worried about
how they're going to
feed their families,
et cetera, et cetera,
that for four months
we're going to add $600
to what you would normally get
from an unemployment check
So if you get 350, 400 bucks
which is about average,
you know what, you're gettin
another $600 on top of that.
And we had some of my Republican
colleagues that said, "Imagine
there would be some low-income
workers who would actually ear
more from their unemployment
check than they previously did
when they were making, you know,
10, 12 bucks an hour.
We can't allow that to happen.
And to me that is so ugly,
so grotesque, so immoral,
that I felt compelled
to speak out about it.
-One of the other things that'
always been a criticism
about the sort of healthcare
that you've proposed
is people will say, "Oh, there's
going to be rationed care.
There's going to be long lines
There's going to be
death panels."
And yet it does seem like no
there is --
Certain people on the righ
make the argument that,
"Hey, this is just how it goes
during a pandemic.
Some people
who are most at risk,
you have to sort of make a
economic decision about how --
what value to put on
their lives."
Is that stunning to you
when you hear that?
-Of course it is stunning.
It is stunning.
And it speaks to
the hypocrisy of these folks
The truth is,
we should ask ourselves
how in the wealthiest countr
on Earth,
not only our doctors and nurse
don't have the equipment
they need,
our EMT people, these are people
on ambulances now,
putting their lives on the line,
doing incredibly important work,
the cops, the firemen,
and they're getting sick.
And in some cases
they're getting sick
because they don't have
the equipment that they need
We don't have enough ventilators
in certain hospitals, ICU units.
How does that happen in
the richest country on Earth
So I think what this brings us
to the conclusion is
that the function of healthcar
should not be to make
$100 billion in profits last
year for the drug companie
and the insurance companies.
It should be to create a syste
which guarantees
healthcare to all,
a system which has a stron
public health component
so that we have doctors an
nurses all over this country
where today we are in --
have a lot of underserved areas.
And that we make sure that
healthcare is a human right.
That's, I think, where
we've got to go.
The other thing,
if I may say so, Seth,
is that in this terrible,
unprecedented moment,
I think it's appropriate
for us to ask
how we got here
and where we want to go.
What are the lessons
that we're learning from this?
When this is all over,
and it will be over,
do we simply go back
to the same old, same old?
And I hope not.
I hope that we ask why it is
that at a time of massive income
and wealth inequality,
half of our people are livin
paycheck to paycheck.
And what we're not talking about
right now, Seth,
is that if you are making 14
bucks an hour, 12 bucks an hour,
and that check stops coming in
which is the case,
how are you going to
feed your family?
How are you going to
pay the rent?
How are you going to keep
your telephone going?
We're not talking about that
And we need another
stimulus package, by the way
which addresses those issues
And we need to rethink
after this epidemic is ove
where America should be.
