00:00Hello everybody! Are you ready to protect our health care? I want to say thank you
00:09to all of you for being out there. This is so powerful and this is a really
00:14important moment because we have seen over and over again that Elon Musk, an
00:21unelected billionaire and Donald Trump
00:29want the keys so they can strip your Medicaid, your Medicare, your Social
00:36Security. They are not even being quiet about it. Elon Musk just called Medicare
00:42and Social Security the big one that we need to eliminate. He called it
00:50entitlements. These are not entitlements. These are earned benefit programs and
00:58Medicaid is absolutely essential for nursing homes. Just get this, 60% of
01:05babies born in Louisiana, Speaker Johnson's home state, those births are
01:11paid for by Medicaid. So every one of these programs, the Affordable Care Act
01:19and God bless Speaker Emerita Pelosi for all of her work in protecting
01:23health care. We need the courage in the Senate that Democrats in the House had
01:31last night when we all voted unanimously, almost unanimously, to stop this budget
01:41bill. We voted no and Senate Democrats have the opportunity to do what
01:47Republicans have done over and over again in blocking the things that we
01:51want to do to expand Social Security, to expand Medicare, to expand Medicaid. They
01:57have filibustered us over and over on us. We cannot give a blank check to Elon
02:05Musk and Doge to continue their destruction of critical benefits and
02:14programs, critical health care, critical privacy rights, critical things that
02:20Americans across this country depend on. Senate Democrats need to hold the line
02:25and not pass this funding bill because at the end of the day we represent the
02:35people of America. We represent the people of America who deserve health
02:43care, who deserve their Medicare, their Social Security, their Medicaid. And I
02:49want to tell you about one person, one of my constituents, Adele. Adele's
02:58daughter got sick with strep when she was four. Now instead of all the usual
03:04symptoms, the strep went systemic and she was septic. Her entire body shut
03:11down within two days, two days. She needed heart surgery, lung surgery and
03:18kidney surgery and she had less than a 5% chance of survival. Now,
03:25thankfully her daughter survived this ordeal and today she's in the seventh
03:31grade and she's and she's been described by her teachers as the
03:37hardest worker they've ever seen. And guess why Adele's daughter is alive
03:44today? Medicaid. She's alive because of Medicaid. Now get this. Adele's
03:50original bill was for $1 million. $1 million. Medicaid retroactively
04:01covered that cost and the subsequent subsequent cost of the treatment. And
04:06so Adele wrote into my office and she said, quote, without Medicaid, I don't
04:10know where we would be or if she would be alive. I do know that without
04:15Medicaid, I would be forever financially destroyed. I don't think sadly that
04:22this is a unique circumstance, right? How many of you have been in this
04:27situation where you haven't been able to afford your health care, where you
04:31have been saved by Medicaid or Medicare or Social Security, the Affordable Care
04:36Act, the things that government should be providing through universal health
04:40care. That's why I'm the lead sponsor. That's why I'm the lead sponsor of the
04:46Medicare for All bill, because I believe that health care is a human right.
04:52And I don't think that people should be profiting off of your pain and your
04:57illness. We should be ensuring that every single person in America has
05:01health care and that it is through a government funded insurance program,
05:06not these private insurance companies that keep driving the cost up of your
05:11drugs and services.
05:13So look, I want to tell you that the reason I really wanted to be here today
05:18and thank you is because we are in a terrible situation in this country
05:22where our very democracy is at stake and around the country. Democracies
05:27fall in matters of months, not years. And when you have a dictator and
05:34authoritarian like Donald Trump and the shadow president, Elon Musk, an
05:38unelected billionaire
05:41trying to destroy our democracy when they don't listen to Congress and the
05:46funds that we authorize and appropriate when they don't listen to the courts and
05:51the judicial decisions, then the only possible solution is the people in
05:59coordinated organizing, strategic organizing, taking to the streets, making
06:05your voices heard, making your stories heard, pushing back on dictators and
06:09authoritarians and billionaires who want to steal from you so they can get higher
06:14tax breaks for themselves. So let me hear it. What do you say to higher tax
06:22breaks for billionaires?
06:26What do you say to protecting our health care?
06:31And are you ready to do what it takes to save our democracy and save our health
06:36care? Thank you, everybody. We've got a lot of work to do, and I'm so glad that
06:42you're out here. Let's go get it done.
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