Sanders to host ‘Medicare for all’ town hall

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will host a town hall on his “Medicare for all” proposal, a 90-minute event that will be streamed online Jan. 23.

The event comes as some high-profile Democrats — including potential 2020 candidates and thus potential rivals if Sanders decides to run again — have gotten on board with Sanders’s plan: expanding Medicare into a national health insurance program so every American would have health coverage.

Sanders will aim to answer a pressing question — how exactly a “Medicare for all” system would work — and will be joined by “leading health care experts,” according to a news release. The Washington Post reports that the town hall will break out into three segments: the current state of health care in the country, the possible economic impacts of single-payer and the way universal health care works in other countries.

{mosads}”For the first time in American history we will be holding a nationally televised town meeting on Medicare for all. The United States is the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people, but amazingly there has not been one network town hall to discuss why our system lags so far behind every other industrialized country,” Sanders said.

“We are going outside the traditional media to change that, to talk about the real issues affecting the American people.”

The event will be livestreamed by various online outlets, including NowThis, ATTN: and The Young Turks, as well as on Sanders’s own social media accounts, from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

In September Sanders introduced a “Medicare for all” bill in the Senate to much fanfare. His announcement brought a crowd of about 300 to pack into a Senate hearing room, and millions more to watch online and on cable television. Sixteen of his colleagues have signed onto the bill, in a stark contrast to when he last introduced a “Medicare for all” bill in 2013 that didn’t garner a single co-sponsor.