Ron DeSantis was asked about the affordability of education, and he was also asked about health insurance in response to Donald. Basically, it was framed around Donald Trump once again saying that he wants to repeal and replace the ACA. Ron DeSantis says that he would supersede it, I think because repeal and [00:00:15] replace doesn't poll well. Seems like the same thing. But he said, we shouldn't be canceling student debt because a truck driver should not be paying for some college graduate's gender studies degree. So to avoid that, you could be burdened for your entire life with student debt. [00:00:33] And he didn't have any answers other than more competition for health insurance. So, Cenk, I wanna go to you next. These are big areas where people are worried about affordability. That drains money for people, young people, especially, throughout their life. [00:00:48] What can be done in these areas? >> Speaker 2: So on healthcare, number one, lowering drug prices is so incredibly simple. It's literally what every other country does. It's what every free market does. Hey, a company says, I would like you to pay this. [00:01:05] Well, that's not how it works. We're gonna have the market, set the prices based on competition. But in this country, because we legalize bribery, they just come in and go. No, this is a price you'll pay and we'll charge as much as we like. And every Democratic president, and every Republican president says, yes, sir, [00:01:23] absolutely, sir. Where's the money? Where do I clear my check? Let's be honest. Let's be honest about what's happening. So any one of us could lower drug prices instantly cuz we're not taking money from drug companies. Problem solved. So that's point one. All right, point two is, look, we need to have universal health care in this country. [00:01:40] Medicare for all is a perfectly great way to do it. Every other developed nation has universal health care, the equivalent of medicare for all. And none of them have sunk into the water, right? I mean, guys like Louie Gohmert, who's a republican congressman, made insane claims about Obamacare and [00:01:56] said that 20% of the women in this country would die if we had Obamacare. Bunch of lunatics. Did 20% of the women in the country die? No, they got better health care. So now, Obamacare was a very mild approach. It's one tiny step towards universal health care. [00:02:11] We need to get all the way to universal health care. If Estonia can afford it and every other developed nation on Earth can afford it, how could we not be able to afford it? No, of course we can afford it. The only reason we don't have it has nothing to do with health care. It has to do with the legalized bribes that almost all of these politicians take [00:02:28] from those same drug companies and the health insurance companies. But now let me tell you about the bare minimum. Public option polls at around 70%, seven out of ten Americans, including republicans and definitely independents. They all say, well, at a minimum, I'd like an option of buying from the government my health insurance. [00:02:43] Just my health insurance, right? Because maybe it's a lower price. I like that idea. Again, something that almost every other developed nation does. Joe Biden's, I'm in favor of public option. You know when he proposed it. Right, never. So, you tell me why he didn't propose it. [00:02:59] Was he lying? I think he was. Maybe you have a more benign view of Joe Biden. You think, no, Cenk, don't be harsh and don't be unfair. Maybe he's just incompetent and doesn't know how to introduce a bill. Doesn't know how to get an ally to introduce it. Doesn't know how to do a standalone bill and [00:03:17] embarrass the republicans by having them vote against their own voters. Not only couldn't he not get something intensely popular done, he didn't even try. Wouldn't it be amazing to have a democratic president that you didn't have to beg to do democratic agenda? [00:03:33] Every time a democratic president wins, now all of us have to get together and push them to do the right thing. Why? We already elected them. We did our part. Why do we have to constantly push them to do the thing that they promised? You won't have to push me. No, I'll be the one doing the pushing. [00:03:48] And so, yes, if you elect me, I'm gonna fight like hell for the average American. And I don't give a damn what the insurance companies say or the drug companies say or what other corrupt politicians say. We're actually gonna get affordable health care in this country. It is very doable the minute you fight corruption. [00:04:05] >> Speaker 1: Marianne, I want to go to you next. What do you think? >> Speaker 3: Yeah, let's be very clear. The majority of republicans as well as democrats want universal health care. Not only that, people are waking up to the fact that it is afforded to the citizens of every other advanced democracy. And even from advanced democracies that are not democracies. [00:04:25] So when people ask, how are we paying for it right now, we're paying for not having it with our lives. 68,000 Americans a year die of lack of health care. One in four Americans live with medical debt. That's a large part when you're talking about housing crisis or anything else, [00:04:40] medical debt. So at this point, when you have 18 million Americans who can't even afford to pay for the prescriptions that their doctors give them. When you have 85 million Americans uninsured or underinsured. We have to realize that the insurance companies, yes, [00:04:55] it's not only the private equity, which is why people can't have houses. It's insurance companies, which is why people don't have health care. Pharmaceutical companies, which is why over a million Americans are rationing their insulin. It's big food companies, which is why we have carcinogens in our food that [00:05:12] are forbidden in other advanced democracies. It's chemical companies, which is why we have chemicals and pesticides that we know harm a child's brain. It's big agriculture and what it has done to our farming sectors. It's big oil, which is why we're, I don't care if they have a democrat or [00:05:27] republican, including Joe Biden. They are ramping up fossil fuel extraction and not ramping it down. Even though we know what a threat that is to the future habitability of this planet. And of course, it goes without saying that democrats and republicans fall in line with the military industrial complex. [00:05:42] We have to get to this root cause, and that is this matrix of corporate overlords and their short term profit maximization. The way Washington works right now, the short term profits of these huge corporate entities, which are their donors, take precedence over the safety and [00:05:59] the health and the well being of the American people. People don't have health care. People can't afford to send their kids to college. They're saddled by college loan debts. They can't buy a house because the system itself is such right now. That these corporatist principles of corporate profits take precedence [00:06:18] over democratic values. They take precedence over humanitarian values. That's what people have to realize. And there's only one way to override this. There's only one way to cut the cord with that system of economic tyranny, and that is with a revolution at the ballot box. [00:06:35] And Cenk was right at the beginning. We have to go about the business of letting the American people know. That's why you should vote for one of us. You should vote for the democrats. But I've got to tell you something. I don't think Joe Biden can make the argument that I just made. Because it's these incremental approaches, or [00:06:52] staying within the context of In the final analysis, we're not gonna do anything that upsets that much our corporate donors. This is how fundamental the problem is and why the American people need to rise up. Only an intervention on the part of the people can change this now. [00:07:09] >> Representative Phillips. >> I think we're all in agreement. We need national health insurance. Strangely enough, I think Richard Nixon may have been one of the more liberal presidents in my lifetime who started the EPA and proposed universal health coverage. [00:07:25] And who undermined it in the senate Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy, go figure. Anyway, we're all in agreement. I represent United Health Group In my district. I chaired the board of the largest health system in Minnesota, Allina. I spent a lot of time on the subject. [00:07:41] There's no question we need a national health insurance program quickly. 66% of all bankruptcies in the United States of America are due to medical debt. We spend $12,000 per capita, which is double that of any developed nation in the world, and our outcomes are mid pack. [00:08:01] And as Cenk was saying about pharmaceutical pricing, Marianne, you agreed. Yeah, they spend $300 million a year enriching the campaign coffers of my colleagues in congress. Of course they wanna maintain the status quo, and it's so easy. There should not be a single pharmaceutical sold in the United States [00:08:18] of America for one penny higher than is sold in Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Spain, or Japan. Simple. But the biggest issue I have to tell you guys is the system. We don't have health care. We have sick care. And that means we pay for sickness. [00:08:34] We pay for procedures. We've got to start investing in health. And my goodness, we live in a society as human beings in which incentives matter. So we should be providing incentives to the healthcare providers to keep people out of the hospital, to keep them from being sick. [00:08:50] And it's not rocket science, but to your point, we have massively successful industries. Both the pharmaceutical industry and the health insurance industry. And let me tell you, I spent a lot of time with my republican constituents in Minnesota. They are just as disgusted with health insurers and [00:09:06] the pharma business as anybody. There is a way to get get this done. If Richard Nixon could have proposed it and a democrat undermined him, I think we should be working together right now and get it done. And by the way, there is more than enough money in that system where we could actually reduce the comprehensive costs of care, [00:09:23] and have it consume less than the 18% of our total economy than it does right now. It's an absolute.