Media treatment of Bernie Sanders: a story in pictures

[Deepak]

BACK ON TOPIC.

Brian Williams, in his segment about the #MyBernieStory hashtag trending on Twitter, decided that the most representative and balanced tweet to show as an example was this, a tweet that could have easily been ripped directly from a Koyaanisqatsi polemic:

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Who is this horse, and why is his anonymous tweet being featured on national news? Well.

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Hyello fellow Amyerican citizen, I would like to point out that The Bots create much problem for democracy, as you can tell from my reference to Wheel of Fortune - Amyerica's Game - where other fellow citizens bid amounts in dollars. Am quite connected to ordinary citizen's desires, da?

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

They caved under the onslaught of lobbying and the Republican steamroller.

Says the amature from the cheap seats who's never spent a day in politics and has no clue what he's talking about.

Everybody's a fucking director.

The fight that you are talking about has been raging for almost the entire twentieth and twenty-first centuries and was FINALLY won, in part, by Obama, but only after extensive compromise and on the shoulders of those decades prior. Sanders himself conceded openly that the ONLY way he would be able to get any of his proposals implemented would be if he had 80% of the entire American populace behind him after being elected--and then that only as a starting point, not a fait accompli.

You're judging Sisyphus for not just pushing the boulder over that final top part there. I mean, why wouldn't he just do that?

It would have been a strong signal to the Bernie fans that she'd brought one of them on board.

Once again, the "Bernie" fans consisted of only around 5-6% of the Democratic voters, which, normally (when there isn't a massive clandestine influencing campaign being conducted by a foreign nation) is statistically irrelevant. As it stood and in the end, the overwhelming majority of them voted for Clinton. But of note is the fact that 12% of Bernie voters voted for Trump. That's the company you keep.

Plus, the overwhelming choice from Democratic voters was Warren as her VP, but two women on the same first-ever Female POTUS ticket would be a tremendous hurdle to overcome, regardless of 30% of Dem voters backing the idea. There are, unfortunately, far too many "conservative" Democrats (read: sexist) still in the party; an issue that she had already faced and known about since 2008.

And as this in depth PBS piece on sexism in the 2016 election reported:

Sanders developed a loyal following, but it mainly consisted of young people, including a vanguard of “Bernie Bros,” and older white men.

Not all male Sanders supporters are flagrant sexists, of course. Most aren’t. They responded to Sanders’ economic message and unvarnished campaign trail persona. He successfully cast himself as an outsider candidate despite his decades-long career in Congress, which is no small feat. The 74-year-old socialist senator from Vermont turned out to be a much better fundraiser than anybody expected. Bernie struck a nerve. At the same time, it’s not a coincidence that so many white men chose him over the female alternative.

“I don’t think there’s any question that there’s gender bias,” said Ryan Geiser, 29, an ardent Sanders supporter from Bellevue, Pa. Geiser, who is white, said that he didn’t base his decision on gender, but knows plenty of Sanders supporters who did. “If Sanders had gone up against a man who had the same politics as Hillary, he wouldn’t have done as well because more white men would have voted for the other guy.” There is strong evidence that subconscious bias shaped the way white men viewed Clinton in the primaries. So just imagine how much sexism could impact the general election, now that Clinton is running against Donald Trump.

And then quadruple it if the ticket had been Clinton/Warren (or, as Trump would have put it, "Crooked Hillary and Pocahontas").

What did Tim Kaine get her?

Well, she won the popular vote by almost three million, in the third largest raw vote tally in US history, second only to the record holder, Barack Obama (nearly tying his 2012 numbers), beating every single white male Presidential candidate in history. And she did that IN SPITE OF the Comey effect and the massive Russian clandestine information warfare that weaponized both Trump and Sanders, who wasted hundreds of millions of dollars and at least six months of time and resources on a pointless civil war attack against her--and the DNC party itself--that accounts, url=https://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/545812242/1-in-10-sanders-primary-voters-ended-up-supporting-trump-survey-finds]single-handedly[/url], for Trump being in the WH.

Had Sanders left the race--like all intelligent losing candidates do--at the point in the primary where it was not possible for him to win (iow, late March), he would not have caused a pointless civil war; would not have wasted everyone's time and resources on bitter infighting over policies that were not "his" in the first place and he openly admitted he couldn't implement; and would have instead meant a united front entirely focused for six months on the actual evil in the race, Donald Trump.

In those six months, Clinton, as is so often erroneously argued, would have visited every blue state a hundred times over, so the idiotic sophistry that it was her lack of presence (in just one state) that caused her EC loss would have at least never arisen to be repeated ad nauseum by other people who don't know what they're talking about, but that would have been just a personal boon to me and others having to constantly point out how idiotic that logic actually is.

Plus, bringing Sanders onto her platform (as with Warren) would have lost her far more votes among Democrats--particularly minorities--than she might have gained among the youth voters who didn't turn out regardless. And remember what no one ever does; Sanders went to the blue states to campaign FOR Hillary after his zombie primary destruction finally came to an end and it didn't do shit.

Yes, I know, it's all Hillary's fault and blah blah blah idiotic gainsaying bullshit, but the problem with that knee jerk response is that, it argues first that Sanders has some sort of magical quality that would have swayed voters no matter what obstacle he had to surmount. But he couldn't surmount that obstacle among his own alleged constituents, which proves HE was ineffectual.

Of course, when you spend a year shitting on someone and then hypocritically turn around to praise them, it's a hard slice, but then, it's also your own fucking fault that you poisoned your own well in the first place.

Regardless and again, in spite of anyone's political acumen (or lack thereof), one need only point to the fact that the right (and the Russians) backed Sanders to win against Clinton. There would be only one reason to do that. They knew they had a much better chance to beat Sanders.

Think about that if nothing else.

 

[Deepak]

Once again, the "Bernie" fans consisted of only around 5-6% of the Democratic voters, which, normally (when there isn't a massive clandestine influencing campaign being conducted by a foreign nation) is statistically irrelevant. As it stood and in the end, the overwhelming majority of them voted for Clinton. But of note is the fact that 12% of Bernie voters voted for Trump. That's the company you keep.

And the company you keep https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2016

Pray tell, though, why you think those votes were Clinton's birthright - since, well, most are not registered Democrats.

And wasn't she similarly unable to surmount that obstacle among her own alleged constituents? Pray tell how Sanders 12% defection of his some 13 million primary voters is a failure, when Clinton's 8% defection of registered Democrats, against the actual evil in the race, is a resounding success.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which percentage is bigger.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Once again, the "Bernie" fans consisted of only around 5-6% of the Democratic voters, which, normally (when there isn't a massive clandestine influencing campaign being conducted by a foreign nation) is statistically irrelevant. As it stood and in the end, the overwhelming majority of them voted for Clinton. But of note is the fact that 12% of Bernie voters voted for Trump. That's the company you keep.

And the company you keep https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2016

That's just an exit poll from December of 2016.

Pray tell, though, why you think those votes were Clinton's birthright

Her "birthright"? What part of the fact that 2008 was both Obama's and her crucible do you not understand? Unlike the 2016 primaries, Clinton was neck and neck with Obama the entire time to the point of her actually surpassing him in the popular vote, itself representing a record turnout for the DNC. She was not only expected to run in 2016 as a result, she was encouraged.

As incredulous as it may seem to some, the Clintons are wanted and admired and beloved by tens of millions of Democrats who have not swallowed the decades of idiotic conspiracy theories that others have.

- since, well, most are not registered Democrats.

Which votes are you referring to? The independents?

And wasn't she similarly unable to surmount that obstacle among her own alleged constituents?

Well, she won the popular vote, remember? By almost three million votes (and upwards of ten million if you count the preferences of registered voters who nevertheless did not end up casting a ballot for various non-partisan reasons).

Pray tell how Sanders 12% defection of his some 13 million primary voters is a failure, when Clinton's 8% defection of registered Democrats, against the actual evil in the race, is a resounding success.

So you're referring just to the percentage of pro-Sanders voters from the primaries who ended up voting for Trump and completely ignoring the points I made about how his campaign was not only attacking Clinton the whole time--causing a bitterly divisive primary civil war that he knew he couldn't possibly win as early as March--but was ALSO weaponized by the Russians and the GOP/Trump campaign.

Iow, you're not only ironically demonstrating my point, but you are also shedding light on the fact that Sanders never went through his own general election crucible, but he did participate in the attacks against Clinton that resulted in 12% of his own loyalists voting for Trump with only 8% of Clinton's voting for Trump.

And see, here's where your ignorance of politics glares through. The 8% is actually statistically normal. In 2012, for example, 7% of Democrats voted for Romney. In 1996, 5% voted for Dole. 11% voted for Bush.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which percentage is bigger.

Better to figure out what caused the percentage to be bigger in the first place.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Just leaving this here as a reminder

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Interesting observation from that list. Sanders spoke in 12 states for Clinton. Of those 11 states, Clinton only won 5: Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Nevada, and Colorado. Maine has an asterisk as Trump took an EV from that state in the rural area.

She lost: Iowa, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nebraska (for the bonus EV?). Only PA and WI were close.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

On the political compass I scored a -9.75, -9.75. I like Bernie way more than Hillary. Hillary has always struck me as someone who is half right and half wrong. She has shifted from conservative Democrat to now focusing on popular issues like identity politics. Look at her changing views on NAFTA, for example. No, this isn't an invitation to debate Hillary. I am talking about myself, where I stand, as an example of someone in the dreaded Far Left, where I was coming into the primary/election, and how I perceived things.

Now, the message I received from Bernie during the primary was that he wasn't going to even bring up certain topics while competing with Hillary. He was being quite "good." Some Bernie supporters in the primary made a stink over Nevada and they may have been correct. You cannot know for sure because anyone you listen to has a political bias either for or against Clinton. Anyway, the message I received from Bernie after the primary was that I should support Clinton. It was a loud and clear message.

Some of my socialist friends and acquaintances also made a decision to operate in the Democratic Party instead of operating outside from now on. So, they're not believing in Counterpunch much these days. Some are calling themselves liberals, even.

Did we forget that Bernie Sanders went on the road campaigning for Clinton or did we fall for Right Wing Noise Machine that was trying to divide Democrats in order to prop up the Republicans?

One of the many things that makes Donald Trump angry is that Bernie Sanders does not seem to hold grudges. In recent speeches, Trump has pointed to the information that has come out, through WikiLeaks’ disclosures of John Podesta’s e-mails, about the Clinton team’s attitude toward Sanders during the primaries: the slights (“doofus”), the schemes (“where would you stick the knife?”), and the eye-rolling (“socialist math”). Perhaps worst of all—at least from Trump’s point of view—was Donna Brazile’s passing along of debate questions. "Now, Bernie Sanders should be angry right? Shouldn’t he be angry?” Trump asked a crowd in Florida. He sounded a little bit puzzled—he would be so mad.

The truth is that Bernie Sanders is very, very angry—at Donald Trump. He is angry enough to have spent weeks travelling on behalf of Hillary Clinton, speaking for her in union halls and arenas, to students and activists. When he talks, he is entirely Bernie—“We are going to fight for that democracy; we are not going to become an oligarchy”—and he hints strongly that he has done some negotiating with her before getting on the stage, and will continue to do so after, as he hopes, she is elected. When praising her positions, he often says “Secretary Clinton has told me” or “Secretary Clinton has promised,” as though he knows that it might not work, with the sort of swing audiences he is dispatched to persuade (students, working-class voters), simply to declare that taking these stands is in her nature. But he knows what he wants: for her to win. “This campaign is not a personality contest,” Sanders said near the beginning of a speech in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Thursday night. “We’re not voting for high-school president. We’re voting for the most powerful leader in the entire world.” He had been introduced by Pharrell Williams, the musician, who was now sitting on the stage with Clinton herself, as if it were an actual high-school election. Statements like that serve to remind Sanders’s supporters that they don’t need to be charmed by Hillary Clinton—he is over it, and they ought to be, too. But, if personality doesn’t matter, the person does.

“There are many, many differences between Secretary Clinton and Mr. Trump,” Sanders told the crowd. "But there is one that is very, very profound. Are you ready for a very radical thought right now? I don’t want anyone to faint! I think we have some paramedics here”—“paramedics here” is, it turns out, an excellent phrase for demonstrating a Brooklyn accent—“but I do want to make this announcement. Are you ready for it?” The crowd indicated that it was. "All right. Madam Secretary, you correct me if I’m wrong here; I don’t want to misspeak for you—Secretary Clinton believes in science!”

When the cheering had abated, Sanders continued, "I know I put her in a difficult position—2016, to believe in science, a little bit dangerous—but what the heck.” He then referred to her "very specific ideas” for combatting climate change, before turning to the mind of Donald Trump. “After years and years of studying the issue from a scientific perspective—I’m joking, I’m joking—he has concluded that climate change is a hoax emanating from China. Now, why he chose China and not Mexico or some Muslim country, I don’t know.”
...
...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/bernie-sanderss-hard-fight-for-hillary-clinton

 

[Deepak]

but was ALSO weaponized by the Russians and the GOP/Trump campaign.

You seem intent on prosecuting the the 2016 election and take every chance to attack potential Dem voters at every turn.

Infighting loses wars.

It doesn't matter if she won the popular vote - she didn't win by enough of a margin. Bernie delivered 88% of his supporters (by your own link) most of whom aren't Democrats (by your own assertion). As Ishmael said in Kingpin "Well, my grandpa always taught me to bowl 15 frames. It's like I told you before, we Amish, we do everything half again as hard as you do."

She's out of the race - get over it.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

but was ALSO weaponized by the Russians and the GOP/Trump campaign.

You seem intent on prosecuting the the 2016 election

No, just Sanders’ highly significant role in its outcome.

It doesn't matter if she won the popular vote

Yeah it does.

Bernie delivered 88% of his supporters

He “delivered” them? How kind of him.

She's out of the race - get over it.

Well, gee, you shore did tell me, I reckon!

 

[Deepak]

It doesn't matter if she won the popular vote

Yeah it does.

Well, sure in the most technical tortured sense of the word. What with this being a board dedicated to politics though, there's sort of an implied context to the sense in which 'matter' is used.

It doesn't matter from the perspective of getting elected. It doesn't matter from the perspective of exercising political power. It doesn't matter from the perspective of being able to effect change and implement a more equitable voting system.

But you're correct that it matters in other, politically meaningless, senses. Please do continue to miss the basic point about how things work in the American political system.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

It doesn't matter if she won the popular vote

Yeah it does.

Well, sure in the most technical tortured sense of the word.

No, in the most direct and obvious and important sense of the word; i.e., who the largest number of Americans wanted to be President and how the largest percentage of Americans wanted Democratic policies implemented, not Trump's/Republican's. Iow, the only important sense that matters to the entire United States (and to the world); how the majority of its people stand in regard to its political policies.

The majority stood with Hillary Clinton and the Democrats and still do.

Someone picking your pocket does not make you a criminal. It makes them a criminal.

What with this being a board dedicated to politics though, there's sort of an implied context to the sense in which 'matter' is used.

Then please use it properly as I am doing.

It doesn't matter from the perspective of getting elected.

So, you are no longer using the proper context of "matters" and are instead referring exclusively to the esoteric anachronism of the Electoral College and how it functions? Or, in this case, malfunctions.

It doesn't matter from the perspective of exercising political power.

Well, bang goes Sanders on that one then, because he claimed that ONLY popular support is what matters in regard to exercising political power.

It doesn't matter from the perspective of being able to effect change and implement a more equitable voting system.

Well, that second part is moot since the President doesn't have anything to do with implementing any such thing; that's up to Congress and the States, unfortunately.

But you're correct that it matters in other, politically meaningless, senses.

Oh, how adorable. Precious even.

Please do continue to miss the basic point about how things work in the American political system.

And the ironic botched attempt at condescension for the DK hat trick. Joy.

 

[Deepak]

No, in the most direct and obvious and important sense of the word; i.e., who the largest number of Americans wanted to be President and how the largest percentage of Americans wanted Democratic policies implemented, not Trump's/Republican's. Iow, the only important sense that matters to the entire United States (and to the world); how the majority of its people stand in regard to its political policies.

The majority stood with Hillary Clinton and the Democrats and still do.

Someone picking your pocket does not make you a criminal. It makes them a criminal.

Show where I made that argument. Show where anyone made that argument.

If you can't blow 'em away with your brilliance baffle them with bullshit.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

No, in the most direct and obvious and important sense of the word; i.e., who the largest number of Americans wanted to be President and how the largest percentage of Americans wanted Democratic policies implemented, not Trump's/Republican's. Iow, the only important sense that matters to the entire United States (and to the world); how the majority of its people stand in regard to its political policies.

The majority stood with Hillary Clinton and the Democrats and still do.

Someone picking your pocket does not make you a criminal. It makes them a criminal.

Show where I made that argument.

Made what argument?

If you can't blow 'em away with your brilliance baffle them with bullshit.

Irony. Big fan.

 

[PyramidHead]

More nonsense from Glenn Kessler's """""""""""""""fact""""""""""""""""""""""""""" checking column





The staggering gall of this publication to say this while publishing a story about the exact same study:



Glenn claims that the study was "not peer reviewed," which prompted this reply from its author:



Apparently, he asked the publication if editorials are GENERALLY peer-reviewed, and used that answer to dismiss a SPECIFIC editorial, which happened to be peer-reviewed, which WaPo themselves also covered earlier in the year. You can't make this up.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

With my health issues and low income, I'm pretty sure I'd be dead by now if I lived in the USA.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

From the WaPo piece (emphasis mine):

“We did not ask about the sole or main reason for bankruptcy, because our past experience indicates that this is a meaningless question,” Himmelstein, a professor at CUNY’s Hunter College who supports single-payer health care, wrote in an email. “The vast majority of debtors suffer multiple problems that bring them to file, and cannot identify a single problem among them. Thus, if an illness led to lost work time (and hence income) and medical bills, debtors cannot separate out these different problems; they are of a piece.”
...
Craig Garthwaite, a health-care policy expert in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, said the study was flawed. “It’s basically saying that if you go bankrupt and you have medical debt, that’s the cause of your bankruptcy,” he said. “That’s not the way you can do this kind of analysis.”

He added: “Rather than looking at a sample of people who go bankrupt and see how many have medical debt, look at a sample of a bunch of people who have medical debt, and how many of them go bankrupt. And that gives you an idea of causality.”

A group of researchers tried that approach in a peer-reviewed study published by the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in 2018. Looking at a random sample of California hospital patients between 2003 and 2007, they found that medical bankruptcies represented 4 percent of all bankruptcies. The patients were between ages 25 and 64 and included only those admitted to a hospital for non-birth-related reasons.

“Based on our estimate of 4 percent of bankruptcy filings per year and the approximately 800,000 bankruptcy filings per year, our number would be much closer to something on the order of 30,000-50,000 bankruptcies caused by a hospitalization,” one of the co-authors of the NEJM study, economist Raymond Kluender of Harvard Business School, wrote in an email.

“This would lead us to be skeptical of the 500,000 medical bankruptcies statistic, but that very much depends on how one defines a medical bankruptcy. … An enormous share of households have some amount of medical debt, so any survey of individuals will report a high share of them have medical debt but this does not imply that the debt caused them to file for bankruptcy.”

Some people could still face high levels of medical debt without ever going through a hospital, and they wouldn’t be counted in the NEJM study.

Warren, Himmelstein and their co-authors have criticized the NEJM study, which in turn criticized their work. Asked about the dueling research, Garthwaite said of the NEJM study: “I do think they’re getting much closer to what the number is.”
...
Garthwaite said of Sanders’s claim: “It’s wrong. It’s just wrong. Just because the number’s big doesn’t make it right, even if you want to agree with the premise. And we should be careful about this. I’m not saying that medical debt and bankruptcy is not a problem, but I think we should have a conversation about the appropriate scale of the problem.”
...
The Pinocchio Test

This is a classic case of cherry-picking a number from a scientific study and twisting it to make a political point.

Sanders’s statements — “500,000 people go bankrupt every year because they cannot pay their outrageous medical bills” and “500,000 Americans will go bankrupt this year from medical bills” — are unambiguous. He’s saying medical debts caused those 500,000 bankruptcies. However, correlation is not causation, and the study he’s citing doesn’t establish causation for all 500,000 bankruptcy cases.

One of the authors sent us rough estimates showing that Sanders might be on target, but those numbers deserve scientific scrutiny before they can be taken as fact.

In the meantime, the statistic Sanders’s campaign cited includes bankrupt debtors for whom medical expenses may have been a minor or relatively small contributing factor. A different, peer-reviewed study arrived at a much different conclusion, suggesting the medical bankruptcy rate is far lower, although it measured only hospital patients and not all types of medical debt.

The omissions and twists are significant enough to merit Three Pinocchios for Sanders.

Here's what three Pinnochios means:

Three Pinocchios

Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions. This gets into the realm of "mostly false." But it could include statements which are technically correct (such as based on official government data) but are so taken out of context as to be very misleading. The line between Two and Three can be bit fuzzy and we do not award half-Pinocchios. So we strive to explain the factors that tipped us toward a Three.

This is exactly like the bullshit 1%/99% "inequality" bumper sticker he kept repeating (until he was forced to modify it) in the 2015 primaries. It's just a deliberate fraud that uses shock hyperbole instead of the actual facts, which is truly bizarre because the actual facts are equally problematic and worthy of attention.

He just can't stop himself from bidding a dollar over anyone's else's bid purely as a political strategy.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The odd thing is that 50,000 bankruptcies due to hospitalization definitely qualifies for me as well past the "acceptable" threshold. Why exaggerate?

 

[PyramidHead]

The odd thing is that 50,000 bankruptcies due to hospitalization definitely qualifies for me as well past the "acceptable" threshold. Why exaggerate?

Who is exaggerating?

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

The odd thing is that 50,000 bankruptcies due to hospitalization definitely qualifies for me as well past the "acceptable" threshold. Why exaggerate?

Who is exaggerating?

Sanders:

Sanders’s statements — “500,000 people go bankrupt every year because they cannot pay their outrageous medical bills” and “500,000 Americans will go bankrupt this year from medical bills” — are unambiguous. He’s saying medical debts caused those 500,000 bankruptcies. However, correlation is not causation, and the study he’s citing doesn’t establish causation for all 500,000 bankruptcy cases.

Iow, it's an exaggeration, even as confirmed by Himmelstein:

“We did not ask about the sole or main reason for bankruptcy, because our past experience indicates that this is a meaningless question,” Himmelstein, a professor at CUNY’s Hunter College who supports single-payer health care, wrote in an email. “The vast majority of debtors suffer multiple problems that bring them to file, and cannot identify a single problem among them. Thus, if an illness led to lost work time (and hence income) and medical bills, debtors cannot separate out these different problems; they are of a piece.”

Even the rebuttal you posted ironically qualifies with: "the number suffering a bankruptcy to which medical bills 'very much' contributed to is 500,000" not "500,000 will go bankrupt from medical bills."

Very much contributed to is not the same thing as medical bills caused their bankruptcy.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Hospitalization is not quite the same thing as medical care or health care costs. Hospitalization is a specific kind of medical care....like prescriptions, surgery, or seeing the eye doctor are specific kinds of medical care.

Medical Bills Cause Most Bankruptcies
BY TARA PARKER-POPE JUNE 4, 2009 2:36 PM

Nearly two out of three bankruptcies stem from medical bills, and even people with health insurance face financial disaster if they experience a serious illness, a new study shows.

The study data, published online Thursday in The American Journal of Medicine, likely understate the full scope of the problem because the data were collected before the current economic crisis. In 2007, medical problems contributed to 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies. Between 2001 and 2007, the proportion of all bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by about 50 percent.

“The U.S. health care financing system is broken, and not only for the poor and uninsured,” the study authors wrote. “Middle-class families frequently collapse under the strain of a health care system that treats physical wounds, but often inflicts fiscal ones.”

The data on medical bankruptcy, compiled by researchers at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University, is based on a survey of 2,314 randomly selected bankruptcy filers during early 2007.

Among families who were bankrupted by illness, those with private insurance reported average medical bills of $17,749 compared to those who were uninsured, who faced an average of $26,971 in medical costs. Those who had health insurance but lost it in the course of their illness reported average medical bills of $22,568.

Hospital costs accounted for about half the expenses (48 percent), followed by prescription drugs (18.6 percent), doctor’s bills (15.1 percent) and insurance premiums (4.1 percent). Medical equipment and nursing home care rounded out the list.

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/medical-bills-cause-most-bankruptcies/

 

[braces_for_impact]

Sanders has his work cut out for him, it's true. The Republicans will of course do what they always do, which is to attack in bad faith, but the mainstream media will as well, they are just more subtle about it. All in the name of the status quo. Sanders (and others) like many Americans, wants to end the legal bribery in this country, and bring big money to heel. They will fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening - even if in the end it's even good for them in the long run.