1. SOUNDBITE (English) Sen. Bernie Sanders, (I) Vermont:
"I believe that health care is a human right, that all people, it is not just a privilege for the wealthy. Number two everybody understands that when we talk about the crisis in health care we are also talking about the crisis of the high cost in prescription drugs. Once again, here in the United States, at a time when the pharmaceutical industry are making tens of tens of billions of dollars every single year, we pay again by far the highest prices in the world for the medicine that we use. The result of that is that one out of every five Americans who leaves a doctor's office with a prescription cannot afford to fill that prescription. That's nuts. So right now despite the gains of the Affordable Care Act, where some twenty million more people now have insurance, we still have 28 million people who have no health insurance. So it seems to me pretty clearly that our job as a government is to guarantee health care to all people in a cost effective way, to take on the pharmaceutical industry and to take on the cost of prescription drugs."
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Sen. Bernie Sanders, (I) Vermont:
"Unfortunately, the legislation that is supported by Rep. Price, who is Mr. Trump's nominee to be head of HHS, would increase by 18 million the number of uninsured Americans the first year that his plan would be implemented."
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Sen. Bernie Sanders, (I) Vermont:
"If Mr. Trump is serious about taking on Pharma, if Mr. Trump is serious about having Medicare do what every other government from around the world does, and that is to negotiate prescription drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry, we are gonna have very shortly, very significant legislation to do just that and I would hope that Mr. Trump would join us and support that legislation."
Sen. Bernie Sanders says health care is a "human right" and that it should not be "just a privilege for the wealthy."
Sanders was speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill about President-elect Donald Trump's pick for health secretary, Tom Price.
"Unfortunately, the legislation that is supported by Rep. Price, who is Mr. Trump's nominee to be head of HHS, would increase by 18 million the number of uninsured Americans the first year that his plan would be implemented," Sanders said.
Sanders and other senators are concerned that Price will rip up President Barack Obama's 2010 health care law if the Senate confirms the Georgia Republican to be health secretary in the Trump's administration.
Price's Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled to begin Wednesday, two days before Trump takes office.
