Sanders, the Lone Senate Voice for Single-Payer Health Coverage

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The major reason that our current health care system is so expensive has much to do with the role that private insurance companies play. The function of a private health insurance company is not to provide health care; it is to deny health care. Every dollar of premium that a health insurance company does not spend on health care needs is a dollar more in profits.

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In my view this is not a health care issue, this is a political and economic issue. You have the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance compan[ies] making billions and billions of dollars every single year off of people’s illness. I think that that is immoral, and I think it creates a system which is dysfunctional.

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And furthermore, these very same institutions — the drug companies, the insurance companies, the medical equipment suppliers — what do they do? They use some of their profits, they pump it back into lobbying [and] campaign contributions — hundreds of millions of dollars over a period of years. That’s what we’re up against. That’s what we’re up against…

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At the end of the day, when millions and millions of people say, “Every American is entitled to health care as a right, and it must be comprehensive, and it must be cost effective” — when that day comes, you’re going to have a single payer system.”