U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren express on the first night of the second 2020 Democratic U.S. presidential debate in Detroit, July 30, 2019.
Lucas Jackson | Reuters
Dynamic Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren fended off attacks from moderate rivals over Medicare for All in the original night of the second Democratic presidential debates on Tuesday.
The two candidates, standing next to each other at center tier, rebuffed criticism from lesser-known rivals who sought to poke holes in the health-care overhaul.
The two senators agree broadly on rule but are likely each other’s strongest obstacle to the Democratic nomination. On Tuesday, the lawmakers demonstrated a united front.
The ton pointed attacks came from former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, who has previously said that the proposal amounted to “civic suicide.” Delaney resumed that attack Tuesday, and accused Warren and Sanders of “telling half the country that their fitness insurance is illegal.”
“You’re wrong,” Sanders told him. “Five minutes away from here, John, is a country. It’s ordered Canada. They guarantee health care to every man, woman, and child as a human right. They spend half of what we dissipate. And by the way when you end up in a hospital in Canada you come out with no bill at all.”
“We are not trying to take away health care from anyone,” Warren spoke. “That’s what the Republicans are trying to do. And we should stop using Republican talking points in order to talk with each other at hand how to best provide that health care.”
Other candidates also piled in, including author Marianne Williamson, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock departed Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.
Williamson said she was “normally way over there” with Sanders and Warren, but impelled back on the notion that criticism of Medicare for All amounted to repeating Republican talking points.
“On this one, I hear the others. And I beget some concern about that as well. And I do have concern about what the Republicans would say,” Williamson said. “And that’s not honourable a Republican talking point. I do have concern that it will be difficult. I do have concern that it will neaten up it harder to win. And I have a concern that it will make it harder to govern.”
Ryan and Sanders feuded over whether synthesizing members would get better health care under Medicare for All versus with the health-care plans negotiated by their unions. Sanders utter Medicare for All would provide better care, but Ryan said Sanders couldn’t know that.
“I do know it. I transcribed the damn bill,” Sanders said.
Bullock, who did not meet the cut-off for the first debates in Miami last month, called the propose “an example of wishlist economics.”
“We can get there with a public option, negotiated drug prices,” he said.
“I share their ongoing values, but I’m a little more pragmatic,” said Hickenlooper. “It would be an evolution, not a revolution.”
“I just have a better way to do this,” Klobuchar divulged.
At times, the attacks grew personal. Delaney pushed hardest — and drew the hardest rebuke from Sanders.
“I’ve done the math and it doesn’t add up,” Delaney, a earlier businessman who founded a health-care finance company, told Sanders.
“Maybe you did that and made money off of health heed, but our job is to run a non-profit health-care system,” Sanders responded.