In 1987, as seen in a video posted by the NTK Network, as the mayor of Burlington, Vt., Sanders claimed that while he supported universal healthcare, trying to put all Americans on Medicaid (both Medicaid and Medicare costs states and the federal government about a half trillion annually) would “bankrupt the nation.”
Younger Sanders opined, “But I think what we understand is that unless we change the funding system and the control mechanism in this country to do that.”
“For example, if we expanded Medicaid [to] everybody,” Sanders continued. “Give everybody a Medicaid card — we would be spending such an astronomical sum of money that, you know, we would bankrupt the nation.”
In 1987, when Sanders was certain it would be far too expensive for Medicaid to be provided for all, the national debt was less than $3 trillion.
Has math changed in the last 30 years?
The Democratic Party has. In fact, so many Democrats have signed on to Sanders’ plan, Rare’s Matt Purple observed Thursday, “Remarkably, more than one third of the Senate Democratic caucus is currently on board with this.”