Bernie Sanders Stays on the Stump, Promotes Medicare for All After Receiving Stitches for Head Wound

By Gregory Krieg, CNN

16 March 19

sewn-up Sen. Bernie Sanders campaigned through the pain on Friday in South Carolina.

Sanders' team told reporters shortly before a health care panel on Friday that he received seven stitches -- along with a clean bill of health -- at a local walk-in clinic after cutting his head earlier "on the edge of a glass shower door."

Sanders did not acknowledge the bandage over his left eye, except to briefly dab at the area around the sutures, during his panel with patients and health care experts at the International Longshoremen's Association Local 1422 union hall in Charleston.

After suffering the injury, and before the public event, Sanders also attended a breakfast meeting with approximately 20 local clergy members, the campaign said. He will carry on as scheduled to Nevada for a rally on Saturday.

The health care conversation on Friday marked Sanders' second appearance in Palmetto State, where he lost badly to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary, since beginning his 2020 presidential campaign nearly a month ago. On Thursday night, he addressed supporters in the gymnasium of a North Charleston Baptist church -- and offered a warning to the health care industry.

"Tonight, we say very clearly to the private health insurance companies, whether you like or not, the United States of America will join every other major country on Earth and guarantee health care to all people as a right," Sanders told the crowd, making his Medicare for all pitch. "You know, and I want you all to know this, every day in the newspapers there's another columnist, and editorial attacking me -- 'this is an impractical idea.' You gotta tell the people of Canada and Germany and Scandinavia and France and the United Kingdom. If they can guarantee health are to all people as a right, don't tell me the United States of America cannot as well."

He returned to that message on Friday during the panel and subsequent question-and-answer session.

"We have a system in which insurance companies and drug companies make billions and yet you've got tens and tens of millions of Americans who cannot afford to go to the doctor," Sanders told the gathering. "To me, that is pretty crazy stuff."