*
Bernie Sanders took Dana Bash’s loaded question about Medicaid and Medicare and flipped it to illustrate the need for Medicare for All.
Bernie Sanders flips Dana Bash’s false narrative
Watch Politics Done Right T.V. here.
Podcasts (Video — Audio)
Summary
CNN’s Dana Bash tried to fold Medicare into the “runaway national debt” story. Still, Senator Bernie Sanders immediately flipped the script, reminding viewers that profiteering insurers and tax giveaways—not earned-benefit programs—drive red ink.
- Sanders rebuts Bash’s claim that Medicare drives the debt, highlighting how private insurers siphon billions in profits.
- Medicare Advantage overpayments alone drain approximately $83 billion annually from taxpayers.
- U.S. per-capita health-care spending hit $14,423 in 2023—far above any peer nation.
- OECD data confirm the United States still spends about twice the rich-country average for worse outcomes.
- Scrapping the payroll-tax cap or extending it to earnings above $250k would close most of Social Security’s gap and strengthen Medicare financing.
Sanders’ pushback exposes a tired media frame: deficits grow not because working families receive health care and retirement security, but because Congress lets the wealthy and large corporations dodge taxes while subsidizing private insurers.
Premium Content (Complimentary)
Corporate media still treat the federal ledger as a morality play in which “entitlements” impoverish the nation. CNN’s State of the Union offered the latest script when Dana Bash pressed Bernie Sanders about “runaway” Medicare costs. Sanders refused to accept the premise. He calmly re-centered the audience on the real culprits: for-profit insurers, pharmaceutical monopolies, and a tax code engineered to protect wealth at the top.
First, the Vermont senator dismantled the myth that Social Security and Medicare are drains on the Treasury. Dedicated payroll contributions finance Social Security; Medicare Part A operates similarly, while Parts B and D rely on general revenue only because lawmakers choose not to lift revenue caps that shelter high earners. Trustees warn that without policy change, Social Security can still pay about 77 percent of benefits after 2035, a gap that could be easily closed by applying the payroll tax to all wages or by imposing a surtax on extremely high earners. Progressive analysts at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities add that modest adjustments—such as extending FICA to investment income—would make the program solvent for generations while expanding benefits. In other words, the program’s “crisis” is a political choice, not an economic inevitability.
Medicare’s dilemma follows the same pattern. Sanders reminded viewers that the United States remains the only wealthy nation that outsources health-care financing to middlemen whose legal duty is to maximize shareholder return. Those intermediaries add enormous administrative overhead—marketing departments, elaborate billing systems, executive bonuses—that traditional Medicare does not carry. MedPAC’s April 2025 hearing put a number on it: the government overpays Medicare Advantage plans by roughly $83 billion every year, primarily through aggressive “coding intensity” and cherry-picking healthier seniors. That giveaway inflates Part B premiums for every beneficiary, even those who remain in traditional Medicare. Add another layer of profits for drug manufacturers, and the result is a health-care bill that dwarfs every other nation’s spending.
Consequently, U.S. health-care expenditures soared to $4.8 trillion in 2023, or $14,423 per person, outstripping GDP growth and leaving millions underinsured. OECD data show America spends roughly double the per-capita average of peer democracies, yet ranks near the bottom on life expectancy, maternal mortality, and avoidable hospitalizations. That gap is not a function of seniors receiving “too much” care; it is a function of Wall Street extracting too much cash.
Sanders’ corrective matters, because deficit hawks invoke debt hysteria to justify austerity. As the Congressional Budget Office recently projected, automatic sequestration triggered by the House Republican budget would slash Medicare by half a trillion dollars over the next decade, while leaving corporate tax breaks untouched. Bash’s framing implicitly legitimized that trade-off. By rejecting her premise, Sanders highlighted a path that protects beneficiaries while improving fiscal balance: tackling price-gouging insurers and drug companies, expanding traditional Medicare to everyone, and financing the upgrade by restoring progressive taxation.
Progressives propose a straightforward revenue menu. Eliminating the payroll-tax ceiling on wages above $250,000 would capture much of the income growth that has flowed to the top one percent; taxing capital gains and investment income at the same rate as wages would finish the job. Simultaneously, negotiating drug prices—as already mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act—and clawing back Medicare Advantage overpayments would save hundreds of billions. marketwatch.com Combine those reforms with a single-payer model that slashes administrative waste, and the federal health tab falls dramatically, even while covering every resident.
In short, Sanders flipped the narrative because he understands the stakes. As long as journalists frame social insurance as the enemy of fiscal responsibility, the public will face relentless pressure to accept benefit cuts that deepen inequality. A progressive lens exposes the alternative: deficits shrink when government stops writing blank checks to monopolies and starts demanding fair contributions from affluent households. The choice is not between health security and sound budgets; it is between corporate privilege and public purpose. That is the debate mainstream outlets must host if democracy hopes to deliver for the many rather than the few.
Viewers are encouraged to subscribe and join the conversation for more insightful commentary and to support progressive messages. Together, we can populate the internet with progressive messages that represent the true aspirations of most Americans.