Senator Bernie Sanders

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Issue August 22, 2009 - http://sanders.senate.gov
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TOWN MEETINGS

Hundreds of Vermonters – strongly in favor of health care reform – packed town meetings. “We proved something that makes us all very proud. We live in a state where people can have different points of view and yet we can listen to each other and treat each other with respect,” the senator said. The meetings were a stark contrast to the scenes of angry, shouting hecklers disrupting meetings elsewhere. To read about the Vermont town meetings in The Burlington Free Press, click here. To watch brief excerpts, click here. To watch the latest “Sanders Unfiltered” on health care reform, click here. To take our latest poll on health care reform, click here.
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Medical Fraud As the nation debates health care, one thing that almost everyone agrees on is the need to fight rampant fraud. Rip-offs add billions of dollars a year to the tab for health care in America. Harvard’s Malcolm Sparrow told NPR that fraud costs hundreds of billions of dollars a year. To address the problem, the Senate health committee voted 23 to 0 for an amendment by Senator Bernie Sanders that would double penalties for health care fraud. “What we have seen for many years is the systemic fraud perpetrated by private insurance companies, private drug companies, and private for-profit hospitals ripping off the American people and the taxpayers of this country to the tune of many billions of dollars,” he said. For more, click here.

Health Centers "A good news story about health care" in rural Vermont was discovered by columnist Bob Herbert after visiting community health centers. To read The New York Times column, click here. To read a Brattleboro Reformer article, click here. Mary Wakefield, a senior Obama administration health care official, toured the same centers and told a press conference in Plainfield, Vt., that the president supports Sanders' plan. Bernie and Rep. Jim Clyburn are sponsoring legislation as part of the current push for health care reform that would quadruple the number of centers.

Drug Prices The politically-potent pharmaceutical industry has been cutting deals in Washington to protect its huge profits, but Bernie still plans to fight for legislation that would allow Americans to buy lower-price prescription drugs from Canada and other countries. A White House healthcare spokeswoman theorized that "health insurance reform that lowers costs, including pharmaceutical costs, would probably make such legislation unnecessary." The senator seriously doubts that, he told The Los Angeles Times. To read the article, click here.


Dairy Crisis As American agriculture becomes increasingly concentrated, President Obama's Justice Department has made scrutinizing agriculture monopolies a top priority, according to National Public Radio. NPR’s John Burnett spoke with the senator about the crisis on dairy farms and his request for an antitrust investigation of Dean Foods. To read or listen to the report, click here. To read about the sale this month of a Northeast Kingdom dairy farm, click here.

Green Jobs Bernie, chairman of the Senate’s Green Jobs Subcommittee, held a field hearing at the Vermont Statehouse. Witnesses included green energy entrepreneurs, workers’ advocates, efficiency experts , and others. “A great deal of exciting and innovative work has been taking place in states and cities throughout our country in breaking our dependence on fossil fuel and foreign oil, in lowering greenhouse gas emissions and, in the process, moving us to the creation of millions of good-paying jobs in the years to come,” Sanders said.

Banker Bonuses Banks and other recipients of taxpayer bailouts submitted plans to a White House “pay czar” detailing how much they plan to pay their top employees. Sanders, outraged, wrote a letter to Kenneth Feinberg: “By denying bonuses to executives at these firms and imposing strict compensation limits you can send a strong signal to Wall Street that the era of excessive speculation is over.” To read the senator’s letter, click here. To watch Bernie’s take on banker bonuses, click here.
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