bernie sanders new hampshire Image by Getty

After President Trump lamented that replacing Obamacare would be difficult because “nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated,” Senator Bernie Sanders that many people already understood the issue’s complexity.

“Some of us who were sitting on the health education committee, who went to meeting after meeting after meeting, who heard from dozens of people, who stayed up night after night trying to figure out this thing, yeah we got a clue,” the Vermont senator told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday. “When you provide health care in a nation of 320 million people, yeah, it is very, very complicated.”

Sanders was on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, the Senate body that crafted the Affordable Care Act under former President Obama’s tenure. Republicans, despite their Congressional majorities, have struggled to coalesce around a way forward on healthcare, with disagreements over how to change or end the health care law. Trump initially wanted Obamacare to be “repealed and replaced” within the first month of his presidency, a goal that’s not been met as the issues gets bogged down in the policy weeds.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis of the crisis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount