Bernie Sanders has urged Britain to resist calls for the NHS to be privatised, saying the health service should never start following the American model.
The Vermont senator was speaking to PoliticsJOE when he explained the awful flaws in the US insurance-based health system.
He explained how 85 million Americans are “not only uninsured, but under-insured.”
Sanders said the debate on healthcare effectively boiled down to whether you believe healthcare is a human right or not.
Praising the NHS, he said: “Let me say a nice thing about the UK – the UK and the Labour party deserves enormous historical credit.
“In 1948, you developed the National Health Service, and that was a message that went all over the world – that healthcare is a human right. And other countries followed you.”
Accepting that the NHS faces “difficult issues” around staffing and costs, Sanders said these were “solvable.”
And he issued a clear warning to Brits: don’t follow America’s “very cruel” system.
“Do not listen to anybody from the United States who tells you that the future of the NHS should move more in the American direction,” he said. “Our system is wildly expensive, inefficient and very cruel.”
Sanders added: “Don’t let anybody tell you that if you’re rich and powerful you get the best healthcare in the world, and if you’re working class, sorry, you’ve got to wait in a really long line or maybe you can’t get it at all. That is inhumane and that’s wrong.”
One man who has previously suggested the NHS should adopt aspects of the US health system? Nigel Farage.
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