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Here’s some analysis of Bernie Sanders’ healthcare proposal, from the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino in Washington:

Bernie Sanders offered a robust defense of his Medicare for All proposal, vowing to end the “international embarrassment” of the US being the only major, wealthy country in the world without a universal healthcare system as the issue takes center stage in the race to capture the Democratic nomination.



The Vermont senator’s speech escalated an ongoing war of words with the former vice-president Joe Biden, who has embraced a plan that would establish a “public option” and would not eliminate private health insurance.



“The current debate over Medicare for All has nothing to do with healthcare,” Sanders told a friendly crowd at George Washington University in Washington. “We are not in a debate about which healthcare system is working well or which is better. What the debate that we are currently having in this campaign and all over this country has nothing to do with healthcare, but it has everything to do with the greed and profits of the healthcare industry.”



In the speech, Sanders also pledged to reject all campaign donations from lobbyists, executives and political action committees of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies and challenged his rivals to follow suit.



“If we are going to break the stranglehold of corporate interests over the healthcare needs of the American people, we have got to confront a Washington culture that is corrupt, that puts profits before people,” Sanders said, adding: “Candidates who are not willing to take that pledge should explain to the American people why those corporate interests believe their campaigns are a good investment.



Sanders’s Medicare for All proposal would transform the current healthcare system into one operated by the government that covers “every man, woman and child in this country”. Under his plan, no one would pay deductibles, premiums and copays and there would be no private insurance. He proposes a four-year transition period by gradually reducing the eligibility rate of the Medicare program.



Several candidates in the primary have signed onto Sanders legislation, but in his speech the senator sought to remind voters who popularized the issue. But he’s facing increasing pushback from Biden and other more moderate candidates who prefer to build on the Affordable Care Act, which was passed by nine years ago under the Obama administration. At an event in Iowa, Biden said Medicare for All was “risky” while lower-tier candidates like Senator Michael Bennet and former congressman John Delaney warned that the party would lose to Trump if the nominee embraces his ideas.



“Let me make a prediction,” Sanders said. “In order to defeat the Medicare for All movement, powerful special interests will be spending millions on 30-second television ads, full-page magazine ads and corporate-sponsored ‘studies’ to frighten the American people about Medicare for All – which is exactly what happened before the passage of Medicare in the 1960s. They failed then and they’re going to fail now.”