Bernie Sanders: Coronavirus Reminds Us Why We Must Guarantee Health Care to All

By Tim Hains, RealClearPolitics

30 March 20

ermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said there is a new normal, with fears of the coronavirus knocking presidential campaigns online-only.

"It's changing every day because elections are being delayed," Sanders said in an interview with NPR Morning Edition's Noel King.

"Where do we go from here with the elections that are being delayed, where we can't go out and hold rallies or knock on doors? That's what we're looking at right now," Sanders said.

Sanders said "it's going to be a very steep road" to win the nomination at this point, but said he was looking forward to more debates.

"I think the American people, especially in this unprecedented moment in American history, want to hear the ideas that will lead us away from where we are right now," he said.

"These are enormously important issues and we need serious debates over them."

"People might not have thought that the United States Congress, the Republican president, the Republican Senate would do what they did," Sanders said about the $1,200 coronavirus stimulus checks going out to most working Americans. "There's a reason for that. And that is that millions of people are now demanding that we have a government that works for all. What role should the campaign play in continuing that fight to make sure that health care becomes a human right, not a privilege, that we raise the minimum wage to a living wage, et cetera, et cetera."

"I think there is growing sentiment in this country that people now understand that it is incomprehensible that we remain the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all, that we have an economy which leaves half of our people...living paycheck to paycheck," Sanders said.

"What kind of system is it where people today are dying, knowing they're sick, but they're not going to the hospital because they can't afford the bill that they'll be picking up?"