Las Vegas (CNN) Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday night broke from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who in a recent interview suggested that passing a watered down version of "Medicare for All" in a deeply divided Congress would still represent a major achievement for the Democratic Party's progressive wing.

Asked about her comments by CNN's Anderson Cooper during a town hall in Las Vegas, Sanders gently disputed Ocasio-Cortez's framing of the situation, and argued that his legislation's four-year transition "is, in a sense, already a compromise."

"I love Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She has done more in her first year in Congress to transform politics, to get young people involved, than any freshman member of Congress that I can remember," Sanders said. "But my view is that Medicare for All, the bill that we wrote, is in a sense already a compromise. It is a four-year transition period."

Ocasio-Cortez, in an interview with HuffPost last week , acknowledged that the ambitious plan to wipe out the private insurance industry and replace it with a universal, government-run program would face a rocky road in Congress.

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