Transcript

vanden Heuvel:    I consider healthcare right, a right, and I was interested in one of the last debates between John McCain and Barack Obama.  When he said healthcare is a right, people responded very affirmatively to that.  I think we need to make sure that every American is insured, and it’s not just a moral commitment, it’s a practical commitment.  Part of what we’re seeing with the decline of the auto industry is because those auto executives weren’t on the barricades a few years ago, fighting for universal healthcare.  They are burdened with healthcare debt, which European countries, Canadian auto companies around the world aren’t bearing.  So, I would fight for Medicare for all.  Some of the colleagues talk about single pair.  I find the term a little bit process oriented, one that many Americans may not latch on to.  Medicare for all, my husband’s on Medicare.  Every American, I would believe, has a family member who has had some experience with Medicare, a system that works, and push aside all these people who babble on about the entitlement crisis.  This is a wealthy country.  We can find a way to ensure that every American is insured, for moral and, you know, for moral reasons and others and, within that, we need to take out the for-profit piece of it.  [My sense of] what will happen in Washington, and it’s a beginning, is that you will have a plan which offers a private plan, to those who are still in one, as well as a public plan.  So, it’s a beginning of a Medicare system.