DANA BASH: A number of your opponents, as you well know, support Bernie Sanders’ Medicare-for-all plan, which essentially eliminates private insurance. Why are they wrong? ...

BENNET: Here — I think you asked the question well, Dana. I think they are wrong. I think what we would be much better off doing in order to get to universal health care quickly is to finish the job we started with the Affordable Care Act and have a true public option. In my case —

(APPLAUSE)

BENNET: In the one — the one that I have designed, it would be administered by Medicare, and it would give all of you the chance to choose what’s right for you or your family. If you want a public option, then you can have it. Basically, it’s Medicare-for-all if you want it. But if you want to keep the insurance you have, which many people do, you’d be able to do that as well.

I don't know if you guys remember when we were passing the Affordable Care Act, the whole thing if you like your insurance you can keep it. Do you remember that? And a few people lost their insurance and all hell broke loose.

And now, Bernie is proposing if you like your insurance, we’re going to take it away from you, from 180 million people who get it from their employer, 80 percent of them say they like it. Every single labor union in America that’s negotiated a benefits package for their workers, for their members, would have to give it under Medicare-for-all. I just don’t think they’re going to give it up.

And that’s why I think Bernie is wrong to propose it. I think what we should do is give the American people