Sanders says he'll pitch 'Medicare for all' when the GOP health-care plan fails

"Medicare for all" will be on the Senate agenda after Republicans fail to repeal and replace ObamaCare, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Sunday in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper.

"We are going to introduce it literally as soon as we're through with this debate. I don't want to confuse the two issues," Sanders explained in his State of the Union appearance. "Medicare for all [is] simply an expansion of Medicare, so it's not just for seniors, but for everybody."

"I'm talking to you 50 miles away from the Canadian border. Somehow they manage to provide health care for all of their people and at a significantly lower cost per capita than we do, and so does every other major country on Earth," Sanders argued, conceding "there is a lot to be talked about" but maintaining his case for a single-payer system.

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Tapper pushed back on some of Sanders' claims, including his habit of placing people who would choose not to have health insurance if given the option in the same category as those who could unwillingly lose coverage under the Republican proposal. Watch the full interview below. Bonnie Kristian

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.