“Tens of thousands of people every single year will die,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) of Republican proposals to change “social welfare” programs ostensibly providing health insurance: “If you throw … 32 million people off of health insurance, what doctors who have studied this issue say [is] that tens of thousands of people every single year will die.”
Sanders made his most recent repetition of the aforementioned claim in a Sunday-aired interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper for State of the Union.
Sanders pointed to PolitiFact — a left-wing and Democrat-aligned “fact-check” operation — as evidence of his claim’s veracity:
The answer is it comes from PolitiFact which, you know, tries to verify what public officials say.
Last week – just on a Sunday show I made that point. PolitiFact checked it out and what they ended up saying during the week is, Sanders was right. And they listed a dozen different studies.
People can go to my web site, sanders.senate.gov, and get that information. Dozen different studies from scientists and doctors say what is fairly obvious. Jake, if you have cancer, if you have heart disease, if you have diabetes and you don’t have any health insurance, you know what? There is a likelihood you will die.
And what they said is that if you throw one of the studies — one of the studies — said that if you throw 23 million people off of health insurance, which is what the House bill did up to — no one knows exactly the number — up to 28,000 people a year — a year will die from that decision. So what we’re talking about is a disastrous bill.
America must “guarantee health care to all” and “join every other country,” said Sanders, calling for a communist administration of health care and insurance. Tapper did not challenge Sanders on the morality or economics of his communist proposals.
Tapper presents himself as a politically objective and non-partisan news media figure. CNN similarly presents itself as a politically objective and non-partisan news media outlet, billing itself as “The Most Trusted Name In News.”
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