Michael Bennet: “Before he leaves the floor, I just wanted to thank my colleague from Georgia for the moral clarity of his remarks…”

“Before he leaves the floor, I just wanted to thank my colleague from Georgia for the moral clarity of his remarks tonight. It is interesting to think for a moment of what we are dealing with and what the context of this budget is. We are living in the wealthiest country in the world, but unlike almost any other industrialized country in the world, we don't provide healthcare to everybody in the United States. This is the wealthiest country in the world. Per capita, we are far wealthier than any other country in the world. And, yet, we made the decision not to provide healthcare to everybody. And, shockingly, not only are we doing that, we are spending twice what any other industrialized country is spending on healthcare--for worse results. Do you know that, today, in the United States of America, our life expectancy is 6 years shorter than if you live in an industrialized country in the world that has a universal healthcare system that costs half of what this healthcare system costs? If you are African American in the United States of America, your life expectancy is 12 years shorter than if you live in a country that has a universal healthcare system that costs half of the one in the United States of America. And those systems, by the way, are very different. Some of them are all public systems. Some of them are a combination of for-profit and nonprofit and government healthcare.…”