Overtime – Episode #521: Nicholas Kristof, Dr. Anne Rimoin, EJ Dionne, Jane Kleeb, Buck Sexton

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Maher.

Okay,

all right, since the topic of the night is yours, let's go to you first, Doc.

Would having a public health care system like Medicare for all,

good question, make it easier to deal with,

but that's a great political question we didn't get to.

You know, what a time for that issue in the middle of a pandemic.

I mean, I could see that really helping Bernie, but the question is, would a public health care system like Medicare for Roll make it easy to deal with a pandemic?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, you think.

Well, we don't know what it looks like yet.

But just in general, I mean, you think about a pandemic,

or you think about illness in general.

And the issue is that

everybody needs health care.

And if you have somebody who can't afford health care, who's sick, not able to take care of of themselves,

those people are everywhere.

Those people, I mean, everybody is everywhere.

And so really, we are as healthy and as safe as

the poorest and least insured, least capable person of taking care of themselves.

We're all in this together.

And so that is a perfect example of how we should all be in this together.

But absolutely.

What matters presumably is universal coverage.

It doesn't really matter whether it's a single payer system or multi-payer system.

So it doesn't have to be Medicare for all.

It just

universal coverage.

A lot of people go to work sick now.

Exactly.

Do they not?

Don't a lot of people in America, even before this, go to work sick.

Well, a lot of people go to work also not knowing that they even have this, right?

Which is one of the concerns.

Oh, yes.

But I think that the big issue here is this issue of work culture.

So we're telling everybody, listen, if you can stay home, if you don't feel well, just stay home and don't go to work.

But there are a lot of people that don't have a choice if they get to go to work or not because they're not going going to have a paycheck.

This is the only country in the United States that doesn't have paycheck.

Moms or dads whose kids get sick and

they have no family leave whatsoever,

which is sort of, I think, one of the big underlying issues we're going to face in the election.

Right, no, I agree with you completely.

And it's this issue of: you know, are you going to go to work if you're sick, if you can't put food on your table, if you can't pay your rent, if you're not going to be able to take care of your children, yourself, your elderly parent?

I mean, it's not fair just to be able to say, well, you know, everybody should just do better and

be good public health citizens and stay home.

We need everybody to do better, and that means also supporting businesses that have good family, pro-family

policies, and making sure that

we, people who are business owners, are mindful of this also in allowing people during this time period in particular, if people don't feel well, it's actually in your best interest to let them stay home and to encourage people to stay home.

We're not a country that prepares well, are we?

We don't think for the future.

And our rural hospitals are closing.

And so when it comes to policies like Medicare for all, or if a single-payer system, whichever one we're going to go down, or a public option, that would not only help in situations like the coronavirus, but it helps in just the obesity issues that you were talking about, addiction,

keeping hospitals.

American kids are 55% more likely to die by age 19, partly because of this question of

lack of universal action.

And young people are tired of us talking about it.

As a country, we've been talking about fixing our health care system for 50 years.

Like, we know

we know what the solution is.

Like, let's get on with it and let's start electing people.

Well, I mean, we're actually going to do it.

Do Obamacare, right?

So that's the best thing.

It was a step in the right direction, no question about that.

And it would be more effective.

It did, a lot.

The Medicaid expansion was the biggest single piece of it, no question about it.

And some states block the Medicare expansion happening every day.

Whereas Nebraska, Medicare.

The voters have to take it into their own.

The Trump administration has tried to sabotage it at every turn.

We know that

we would not agree.

Yes.

I mean, no, they do not like Obamacare.

That is for sure.

That is a true thing.

But that's not how we used to do things in this country.

If we passed something, then they maybe got together and then tried to improve it.

That's certainly what happened.

Look, I mean, there's a few...

I'm sorry, I didn't even get to.

No, no.

I was going to say, I mean,

the issue of preexisting conditions, I mean, Democrats won on that.

That's a win.

I mean, across the meaning that everyone now, no one now goes forward and say, oh, we got to get rid of that, right?

So there are areas where the ball has been moved the way that the progressives, liberals would want it to.

Although the administration litigation would overturn Obamacare and then would bring back preexisting conditions.

Verbal support is not the same as supporting a policy that actually ensures it.

And just on your point, again, on this radicalization of the Republican Party, which has pushed almost all moderates, people who would have been happily Republican 30 or 40 years ago, a good example of that is our food stamps.

Bob Dole and George McGovern, who could not have been farther apart politically, got together and said, we've got a hunger problem in America and we have to do something about that.

If a Republican did that kind of thing with anybody, any Democrat on the other side in the Senate, they might face some of those.

Because

we talked about it.

They were both World War II veterans.

Isn't that true?

That's right.

They both remember what it was, especially Bob Dole.

They remember what it was like to come home and have the entire community take care of it, because Bob Dole was wounded, remember?

Do you think the Democrat Party is not the furthest left that it's ever been?

I mean, you keep talking about the radicalized Republican Party.

I'm just

saying the Democratic Party, I mean, we have an open socialist as the frontrunner, right?

A simple statistic.

If you ask Republicans who they are, ideologically, two-thirds or more are conservative.

If you ask Democrats, they're split, half liberal and half either moderate or conservative.

If you look at the voting patterns in Congress.

He's only the frontrunner because they have

split.

They're all people.

the people who are the

majority of Warren and Buddha Judge, a few people.

I'm sorry, but if

they're close to him.

Okay, but if Buddha Judge, Bloomberg, Biden, and Klobuchar were all one person, ooh.

They'd be really, really rich.

An old gay man who throws staplers at your head.

No.

That would be the frontrunner.

And that may happen in two weeks.

We may see that.

Bernie Sanders may not be the frontrunner because

three of them may drop out or something like that, and then we will see.

So, I don't know.

I don't think even most Democrats identify as liberal.

No, that's absolutely right, especially in our communities of color, where black, Latino, Native Americans, they are not flaming liberals as you would like them to think that they are.

They're very moderate on social issues and very liberal on economic issues.

They want to see our government get back to the job that we believe, that it levels the playing field, that it brings fairness, and that the mantra that Senator Wallstone used to say is true for all Democrats, that we we all do better when we all do better.

And that's what we have to give back to our Democratic Party in order to heal these kind of divides right now in order to whip beat Trump, which is the ultimate goal, of course.

Well, I mean, honestly, it is

stuff that's not going to be a problem.

It's not going to go well for your boy.

It's just not.

No, I'm sorry, because of.

What does that even mean?

I mean, this virus is something he cannot lie his way out of.

No, but you can't.

He said it was a hoax today.

What do you think about it?

Just answer that.

What do you think about that?

He said it is their latest hoax.

You don't think it's a hoax?

He doesn't think it's a hoax.

Of course it's not a hoax.

Why is he saying that?

He's saying that what's the hoax is the way that Pelosi and Schumann or others are saying that there's been an insufficient response, that he doesn't know what he's doing, when we don't even know how many cases we have and no one's died yet.

But your point about accountability is important because he can't, if there are people that are dying from this in large numbers, stock markets really low, Trump's going to suffer.

And I wouldn't be up what I just said.

your boy's not going to go well.

Who said it's not going to go well for your boy?

Right, but you're assuming.

I mean,

we'll see what ends up happening.

We'll see.

But the point I'm trying to make is just that there will be accountability here.

So why are people trying to force it before it's there?

But I'm seeing it for you.

When I see people with the masks on the street, now, occasionally you do, and it just reminds me that

America always thinks these things are not going to come here.

We didn't think it was with terrorism.

And then terrorism came here.

And maybe

AIDS, I think, was in the world before it came here.

And now, this, and environmental destruction on a level that other countries have seen.

It always is going to come here.

We've had pandemics stretching back from the origins of the Republic.

Actually, New York City has a history of cholera epidemics where they were stacking up

Irish immigrants and African-American freed slaves down on Lower East Side by the thousands over the course of a few weeks.

So this has been, and people were saying, where's the government on this one?

I'm just saying, the party's over.

In the sense that this country has periods where they party.

The gay 90s,

Tony,

gay 90s, the roaring 20s, the go-go 80s.

And we've had it the last 10 years.

And then the party ends for one reason or another.

We are going to have to.

The party's over right now.

I just think we're going to have...

Well, when you lose $6 trillion in a week and people are freaked out about a pandemic, which is inevitably coming, I do think

it's going to be a little

less of a party.

It's bad.

Antoine the Ecker.

I'm Paul an Uber That's right.

Well,

we have economic inequality that was already here, right?

So we have the millionaires and the billionaires, and then you have everybody else.

And so we as a party have to start

fighting for policies that matter.

Going out and kissing strangers, people are going to be inside and taking care of themselves a little more.

And then we'll party again someday, I promise.

Thank you, everybody.

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