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Sanders makes campaign stop in Charles City

  • Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) speaks to potential voters at a town hall in Charles City on Sunday. (Press photo James Grob.)

  • Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) heard the concerns of potential voters at a town hall in Charles City on Sunday. (Press photo James Grob.)

  • Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) heard the concerns of potential voters at a town hall in Charles City on Sunday. (Press photo James Grob.)

  • Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) speaks to potential voters at a town hall in Charles City on Sunday. (Press photo James Grob.)

  • Potential voters asked presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) questions and voiced concerns at a town hall event in Charles City on. Sunday. (Press photo James Grob.)

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

The event was called a “Green Jobs Town Hall,” but Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke very little about “green jobs” and a whole lot about health care and his “Medicare for all” plan.

It seemed to be the issue that was foremost on his mind, and judging from their questions, it was foremost on the the minds of audience members as well.

Sanders told the 205 potential voters gathered at the Youth Enrichment Center at the Floyd County Fairgrounds in Charles City on Sunday evening that any future improvements to health care — or to anything else — would ultimately be up to them, not Washington politicians.

“Real change never takes place from the top on down, it always takes place from the bottom up,” Sanders said. “I think this country faces unprecedented challenges, and the only way to bring about the change that we need is for millions of people to stand together and fight for justice.”

It was the first campaign stop in Charles City for Sanders, a U.S. Senator from Vermont, who is a registered Independent but caucuses with the Democratic Party. He is seeking the nomination to be the party’s candidate to face President Donald Trump in the 2020 general election.

With more than 20 Democrats running, Sanders is consistently polling among the top two or three candidates nationally in advance of the Feb. 3 Iowa Caucuses. In most surveys of Iowa Democratic voters, Sanders polls among the top four candidates in the state, along with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who campaigned in Charles City a week ago.

Sanders touched on several different issues on Sunday, and took questions from the audience regarding several more, but it was his Medicare for all proposal that received the most time.

“I strongly supported Obamacare, and am on the committee that helped write the bill, and it’s done a lot of good, but the cost of health care in America remains prohibitively high, so we have got to go another step forward,” Sanders said. “That is what I mean by Medicare for all.”

Sanders said Medicare for all would be paid for out of the general tax base in a “progressive and fair” way. He said his plan is to exempt the first $29,000 of a person’s income and to put a 4% tax on income above that.

“That means the average worker who makes $60,000 per year will have to pay $1200 in taxes for comprehensive health care that will have home health care, dental care, eyeglasses, mental health, hearing aids, you can go to any doctor you want, you can go to any hospital you want,” he said.

He said implementation of his plan would result in no more premium payments for individuals or employers, and no more deductibles or out-of-pocket expenses.

Sanders said that one of the keys to success for his health care plan would be bringing drug prices down.

“The reason Canada and other countries have such lower drug prices is because they negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry,” he said. “Medicare for all will negotiate prices and not allow the drug companies to charge any price they want.”

Sanders said he would allow pharmacists and doctors to purchase FDA-approved drugs from abroad.

“Once we drive prices down, Medicare for all will be able to say that nobody in America will have to pay more than $200 a year for the prescription drugs they need,” he said.

Sanders pointed out that the United States is the only advanced nation in the world that doesn’t guarantee its citizens health care coverage. He promised to “take on” the insurance companies, drug companies and other big-money interests that have a stake in maintaining the status quo.

The audience voiced its approval of Sanders’s ideas throughout his speech. Afterward, Bill and Judy Vorhes, cattle farmers who live near Marble Rock, said they liked much of what Sanders said. Both said they would “most definitely” caucus for Sanders in February.

“A lot of the things he’s talking about, I’ve been talking about for five or six years, and a lot of people have just laughed at me,” said Bill, who is a Vietnam veteran. “Until it hits them in their own pockets, they’re just going to laugh and think you’re just telling them a story.”

Judy said she thought Sanders was “very brave” to run against President Trump.

“Trump has a lot of ideas that people believe in, and I don’t,” she said. “I believe in a lot of what Bernie has to say, especially on climate change. It worries me for the future and for my grandkids and what they’re going to encounter down the road.”

Judy was pleased that Sanders said addressing climate change would be a top priority for him as president.

“We have a moral responsibility to make sure the planet that we are leaving these little kids is a planet that is healthy and habitable,” Sanders said, to cheers and applause.

“As president, I would speak to Russia and China and India and Pakistan and Brazil, and countries all over the world, and tell them instead of spending, as a planet, $1.8 trillion a year on weapons of destruction to kill each other, maybe we should pool some of those resources and fight our common enemy, which is climate change.”

Not everyone in the audience was in agreement with Sanders. Kevin Gavitt of Charles City challenged Sanders about single-payer health care.

A veteran, Gavitt shared personal examples of delays and long wait times — years and sometimes decades — he and members of his family had experienced at veterans hospitals..

“It took 20 years before my brother finally got his shoulder operated on,” Gavitt told Sanders. “I don’t want to see anybody in this room have to wait like that because of a single-payer system.”

Sanders, who said he was speaking as the former chairman of the Senate committee on veterans affairs, agreed there were problems at the VA, but said most veterans are happy with the care they get.

Gavitt indicated that he was one veteran who was not happy, and wondered if the current problems with VA health care would become the same problems with Medicare for all.

Sanders said the biggest problem was that there are more than 30,000 staffing vacancies at the VA that need to be filled. He added that many veterans organizations are more concerned with privatization of the VA than they are with the quality of care they receive.

“Trump is moving toward the privatization of the VA, which I think is a bad idea,” Sanders said. “I won’t tell you it’s perfect, but if you go check out what the American Legion and other veterans groups say, they think it’s the best care available for veterans.”

After the event, Gavitt said he had no intention of asking Sanders a “gotcha” question.

“I just wanted to educate myself on Bernie, and from there, maybe ask him a question that I wanted to hear the answer to,” he said. “It’s not such a bad thing to have an opposing point of view.”

Gavitt said he’s not considering voting for one of the Democratic candidates running, and that he’d rather not say whether or not he intends to support President Trump in the general election next November.

“You might not agree with everything someone says, but you can have a conversation and make your decision from there,” Gavitt said. “When you hear clips in the news, you don’t hear the entire story. It was nice to hear the unabridged version tonight.”

Gavitt said he didn’t think Sanders was prepared for his questions. He said he understood that political candidates can’t always be ready for every question that gets thrown their way.

“I don’t think he was ready to be challenged as hard as he could have been,” he said.

Sanders also took questions from the audience regarding the issues of agriculture monopolies, gun violence and the minimum wage.

He said he’s proposed raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, making it easier for workers to join unions, and he favors equal pay for equal work.

Sanders called the decline of family farms one of the tragedies in his lifetime.

“I promise you that our trade policy will not be developed by a Tweet in the middle of the night,” he said. “Our trade policy will incorporate the ideas of family farmers. I am a strong proponent of family-based agriculture, and we need a trade policy that works for farmers, that works for workers, and doesn’t just work for the CEOs of large corporations.”

On the issue of gun violence, Sanders said he opposes the mandatory buyback (of firearms) saying it is “essentially confiscation, which I believe is unconstitutional.” He did promise to stand up to the gun lobby.

“I will not be intimidated by the NRA (National Rifle Association),” Sanders said. “We cannot allow the NRA to dictate policy because they’ve intimidated Trump and intimidated the Republican Party.”

Sanders said sane, common-sense gun safety was very high on his list of priorities.

“We need to greatly expand universal background checks,” he said. “People with a history of violence should not be owning guns, that’s a no-brainer.”

Sanders said he would end all “gun-show loopholes,” which he said allow people to purchase guns at a gun show without a background check.

“I believe that we have got to ban the sale of assault weapons in this country,” he said. “These are weapons that are not used for hunting. They are weapons that are designed to kill people as rapidly as you can.”

Sanders stopped in Orange City earlier in the day on Sunday and was scheduled for a town hall on Monday with veterans and seniors in Des Moines.

On Friday and Saturday, Sanders made stops in Coralville, Council Bluffs and Des Moines with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who recently endorsed Sanders. Ocasio-Cortez was not at the town hall in Charles City.

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