Bernie Sanders’ ‘Medicare For All’ Online Town Hall Draws Over 1 Million Live Viewers
The Vermont senator delighted in circumventing the television networks.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders’ televised town hall on Tuesday night to promote single-payer health care, or “Medicare for all,” drew a live audience of about 1.1 million people ― all but a few hundred of whom viewed the event online.
For Sanders, whose single-payer health care legislation elicited the support of over one-third of the Senate Democratic Caucus, the 90-minute broadcast at the U.S. Capitol visitors center was an opportunity to promote a top policy priority while thumbing his nose at the “corporate media.”
“This is the first Medicare for all town meeting held in our nation’s capital. This is the first nationally televised town meeting on Medicare for all,” Sanders said in his introductory remarks. “And very importantly, this is the first nationally televised Senate town meeting that is taking place outside of corporate media.”
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The event consisted of three expert panel discussions moderated by Sanders: the first discussing problems with the current American health care system; the second on the potential economic impact of a “Medicare for all” program; and the third comparing the American health care system with those in other countries. Each of the three segments also featured questions from the live audience and video queries submitted online.
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Some of Sanders’ guests on Tuesday, including Richard Masters, the pro-single payer CEO of MCS, a Pennsylvania-based picture frame maker, and Dr. Claudia Fegan, chief medical officer for the Cook County Health and Hospital System in Chicago, were veterans of his legislative rollout and his Canada trip, respectively.
Other guests were new ― like Dr. Donald Berwick, a Harvard medical school professor who led the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Obama administration ― reflecting the steady progress of Sanders’ cause into the mainstream. As one of the Democratic Party’s premier health policy experts and technocrats, Berwick’s imprimatur is a major asset.
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“The reason we’re doing this program tonight is you don’t see this stuff,” he said in his concluding remarks. “It ain’t gonna be on CBS. It ain’t gonna be on NBC.”
“What astounds me is we already have a pretty good majority of the American people who already believe in universal health care, believe that it is the government’s responsibility to make sure that health care is a right,” Sanders added. “And we have reached that stage with media not talking about the issue at all.”
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