Bernie May Not Get Everything Done He Wants to Get Done — But That’s OK, He’ll Set Us on the Right Path D.T. Pugh Follow Feb 24 · 6 min read

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Despite what Donald Trump believes, the president is not a king. No one person has control over every aspect of government. No one person has control of what laws get passed on their watch. Bernie Sanders has made bold proclamations about what he plans to do as president, but he mostly likely won’t get everything done that he wants to get done — but that’s ok, because he’ll push the country in the right direction.

Out of all the major western industrialized nations, only the United States does not guarantee healthcare to all its citizens. The American dream was once that if you worked hard you could become somebody. Now, we are faced with the American nightmare: if you get sick, you could end up going bankrupt. If you’re a strict Darwinian on the issue, then maybe I can’t convince you to care about the well-being of other people. But even if you are the type of person who only cares about himself, then this American nightmare could affect you too, even if you have insurance.

Not only is the health care system unfairly cruel, but it’s incredibly wasteful as well. There’s no reason that the costs of our prescriptions and medical procedures should be as high as they are. And they are high because there’s a middleman, the insurance companies that exist in order to make a profit off of the services they provide, (when they decide it’s in their financial interest to provide said services). To make a profit on the illness of others is immoral. To do so maximizes the insurance company’s financial interest while minimizing the patient’s well-being.

When insurance companies have the power to deny a drug that a patient needs to get better — or make the cost of that drug so exorbitant it might as well be denied — that goes directly against the aim of medical care, to ensure a patient’s health. All denying services and prescriptions does make money for the insurance companies, providing shareholder’s growth for their portfolios. Insurance companies tell doctors what drugs to prescribe and what procedures to perform because they’re worried about their bottom line as opposed to the health of the patient. As a healthcare professional myself, I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating it is when I want to prescribe the drug that will best help my patient only to have the drug be denied by their insurance company, or have the price of the drug be so egregious (sometimes hundreds or thousands of dollars) that the patient makes the choice to not treat their condition. Doctors don’t get a cut when they prescribe a more expensive drug, they just want to prescribe the drug that’s going to work. Insurance companies benefit monetarily when they can deny a drug or medical service with no regard to a patient’s well-being. Other countries get quality medical care for all their citizens at a reasonable cost and they’ve figured out how to do so decades ago. Why can’t we in the United States?

If Bernie becomes President, he will not be able to snap his fingers to make private insurance disappear and then implement a national healthcare system like they have in Canada or the U.K. He will have to work with congress, he will have to negotiate. And given the adversity to change in America, we’d be lucky to get a public option out of his presidency. But we start off by fighting for lofty goals and we’ll baby step our way to what’s really going to work best in the long run. A Yale study that just came out demonstrating that Medicare-for-all will end up saving American’s money. Americans are slow to change their stances despite what science says (see: climate change) but Medicare-for-all is the goal we need to strive for.

If you look at passing a law as a negotiation, you will first need to aim for the goals you want, maybe even more than what you want, and in the negotiating process, they will most definitely get watered down. This is one of the problems I have with the other candidates in the race, aside from Elizabeth Warren, they’re all too willing to compromise before they even get to the negotiating table. Let’s not forget, whoever the nominee is, they will never earn the support of the Republican party should they become president. Obama tried to get bipartisan support on just about everything at first, but he learned the hard way that there is no longer any such thing as bipartisan support. There’s an obstructionist side — Republicans, and a side where policies will be watered down to appease the middle — Democrats. When the ACA was passed, Obama couldn’t get the public option he wanted, not because the Republicans wouldn’t support it, but because there were some Democrats who would not vote for the bill if there was a public option. The Republicans were not going to vote for the bill no matter what was in it. They weren’t going to vote for any bill that Democrats introduced. That’s the reality of Washington these days. You need to push for what we really need, you need to aim high because when the bill comes to the president’s desk, it’s going to be diluted — but it’s a step in the right direction. And once a law is passed that benefits a large swath of the American people, they’re hard to get rid of. Just look at the ACA now, lawmakers on both sides know that getting rid of this law will hurt their constituents and they won’t touch it anymore.

As for healthcare, if there’s any law that we can pass to make the situation better for all people, most people will consider a win, and we will still need to constantly push things forward to make things better and better. When it comes to policies on climate change, however, we can’t afford to make incremental changes because the situation is much more dire. To start with, the Republicans deny that it’s even a problem, but Bernie is supporting the Green New Deal, which is a radical referendum, but it’s what we need at this moment to turn the tide of a worsening climate. We can’t be slow in addressing climate change, because it’s going to bring harm to us all fast — it’s already affecting us in detrimental ways. We need a president who’s going to be a bulldog on climate policy, because it’s a run-away train, an emergency, an existential threat — especially for our children who will face growing up in a world that’s uninhabitable by the time they are adults. If we don’t do something drastic now, we are dooming our future generations.

This is no time for bipartisanship, this is no time for unity. One side operates in bad faith and will never side with the Democrat on anything of great importance. All compromise will have to be done solely within the Democratic party, so we need to aim high. If we have a Republican Senate, no Democrat will get anything done, let alone a President Sanders. The best we will hope for is the threat of the veto for the harmful, corporate sycophantic laws that are attempted to pass, and we’ll get nowhere. This November, we need to vote in a Democratic Senate and House to have a chance of getting anything from a President Sanders done. Even then, it would not all get done, but that’s okay, because we’ll be moving in the right direction.