It is sometimes tiring to watch the defenders of healthcare. My ears popped up as I listened to this healthcare advocate slam Trumpcare in the appropriate terms, no mincing of words.
Jeff Weaver on Trumpcare: People in this country are gonna die
This is how allies of health care must speak "People will die" Truthfully (VIDEO) pic.twitter.com/p7hJhUsQ4C
— Egberto Willies, Politics Done Right host 🇺🇲🇵🇦 (@EgbertoWillies) September 25, 2017
This is how allies of healthcare must speak if they intend to get the correct message across about the effects Trumpcare will have on real people. Jeff Weaver, former Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign manager appeared on MSNBC. Katy Tur asked Jeff Weaver if pushing single-payer Medicare for All was appropriate now. Weaver did not blink.
“Well look, Bernie Sanders has advocate had advocated Medicare for All,” Jeff Weaver said. “But he has also been the point person for the Senate Democrats in defeating the repeated Republican attempts to throw tens of millions of people off of their health insurance. I think the people you’re seeing on the screen today being dragged out of the Republican hearing room have it right. This is real, you know, we talk about numbers and statistics and all this. But at the end of the day, people in this country are gonna die if the Republicans get their way. And I think the focus right now has to be on defeating this horrendous attempt to really harm the health care of millions and millions of Americans, working-class people, people with disabilities.
Katy Tur interrupted Weaver. She asked if saying people would die was hyperbole. Weaver pushed back.
“No, absolutely not,” Weaver said. “There’s been a number of studies that have been done by Harvard other places that show that access to health care extends your lifespan. People who do not have access to healthcare have shorter lifespans. That’s just a fact, Katie. So it is not hyperbole. It is something that people don’t like to talk about in the context of budget numbers, and you know, CBO estimates. But the truth of the matter is is that this affects real people in real ways. And if you saw that the press conference the senator had a couple weeks ago, a young woman with her child who makes the choice between medicine for her child of medicine for herself. That is the real impact of these kinds of decisions that go on in these hearing rooms. And the people that you’re seeing being a dragged out, they know firsthand better than anybody else what the impact of the Republican health care legislation would be.”
If everyone laid out the draconian policies of the Right in the appropriately stark terms, they would move enough voters. It is not necessary to move all, just enough.