'Join the Rest of the Industrialized World': Sanders Blasts Trump on Healthcare

Below is what happened on Trump's 28th day in office. You can find out what damage was done every other day so far on the Saddest Calendar on the Internet.

In a Facebook live video streamed after Trump's first address to a joint session of Congress last night, Bernie Sanders responded by listing what Trump failed to mention during his speech, including: plans to address income wealth inequality, a broken criminal justice system, a corrupt campaign finance system, and voter suppression that limits marginalized communities' ability to participate in democracy. Finally, Sanders blasted Trump for his plans to repeal Obamacare and called for a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program.

"[The Republicans] are not so cocky anymore about simply repealing Obamacare and they should be worried because the American people are standing up, and what they are saying is 'no,'" Sanders said. "What we must be doing right now is not only defending the Affordable Care Act, not only improving the Affordable Care Act—we have got to move forward and join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee healthcare as a right, not a privilege."

The few details we know of Trump's plan to dismantle the Affordable Care Act are worrying. Even before his inauguration, Congress approved a budget blueprint that gave Republicans the power to end major provisions of Obamacare, and on January 20th, Trump signed the executive order "Minimizing the Economic Burden of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Pending Repeal."

However, what's more worrying is that we don't fully know what Trump intends to instate in the ACA's place, which is increasingly aggravating government representatives (and many of the millions insured under the act). In Sanders' video, he cites the fact that half of older Americans have no retirement savings and that Trump has proposed a massive cut to Medicaid. A handful of other senators responded with frustration.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) wrote that she was angered by Trump's promise to expand substance misuse treatment "just one day after proposing a budget outline that would force severe cuts to domestic programs that are critical to supporting New Hampshire's efforts to combat the opioid epidemic."

In a Facebook post, Senator Al Franken (D-MN) released the following:

I strongly believe that we shouldn't repeal the Affordable Care Act, especially given that Republicans have no plan to help the tens of millions of Americans who would be hurt by ripping up the ACA. In tonight's remarks, the President again failed to offer any specifics about what a replacement plan would look like. We should be building on the successes of the ACA and working to make fixes where things should be working better.

How exactly Democrats will fight back (or sit back), though, remains to be seen. While some senators responded to Trump's speeches with opposing stances lacking in action, others gave their constituents—and the American people—more of a promise.

Keith Ellison (D-MN), the progressive congressman who lost the Democratic National Committee chair election last weekend to establishment Democrats' pick, former labor secretary Tom Perez, responded to the speech in its entirety with a gentle threat to Trump: "As long as the President is committed to dividing Americans and making life more difficult for millions of Americans, I will remain committed to standing in his way," a press release on his website reads. "You can count on that."