Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1330 - Bernie Sanders
Uploaded: 2019-08-06T23:00:42.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1330 - Bernie Sanders' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-08-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1330 - Bernie Sanders' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-08-06. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1330 - Bernie Sanders

and we're live hello Bernie how are you Joe wonderful pleasure to meet you nice
to meet you
it's exciting to have you here man and it's obviously an exciting time for you
you know
presidential campaign is up in full swing do you do you get frustrated by the
the time
constraints of the debates absolutely it's you shouldn't even call them a
debate what they are
is a you know reality TV show in which you have to come up with a soundbite and
all that stuff it is
the meaning it's the meaning to the candidates and it's the meaning to the
American people you
can't explain the complexity of health care in America in 45 seconds nobody can
but why is it
still done that way have you to try to do let's pull this thing you know I
think the DNC is in a
difficult position they have 20 plus candidates and they want to give everybody
a fair shot which
is is the right thing to do and then if you're gonna have 10 candidates up on
the stage what do
you do but there are other ways that we've got to do it because the issues
facing this country are so
enormous and in some cases so complicated nobody in the world can honestly
explain them in 45 seconds
and then that what encourages people to do is to come up with soundbites to do
absurd things if I yelled
and scream on the show I took my clothes off we get a lot of publicity right
yeah you give a thoughtful
answer to a complicated question it's not so sexy for the media you don't even
have a chance to give a
thoughtful answer like Tulsi Gabbard went after Kamala Harris and then Kamala
Harris had about 12 seconds to
reply to it it was so ridiculous to do to have something that's such an
important issue like
did you or did you not put all those people in jail for marijuana did you laugh
about it did this happen
did that happen all these different things with was evidence withheld that's
how these are a long
conversations but it takes us to another issue and that as a nation we do a
pretty bad job in analyzing and
discussing the serious issues facing our country and I hold the media to some
degree responsible for
that you know other countries what they do is that hey Joe you want to run for
president I'll tell you
what whether your party in the general election we're going to give you a
certain amount of time hours
on television and you use those hours any way you want you want a 15 minute
discourse you remember
Ross Perot yes and people used to laugh at Ross Perot because he used to get up
there with a chart and
all this stuff and and the media made fun of him but in fact he tried in his
own way to explain his point
of view to the American people and we need serious discussion on on serious
issues well he had the
because he was so rich he had the ability to buy airtime on network television
which is pretty
unprecedented he just bought a chunk of airtime and then pled his case but you
know what goes on in
other countries you don't have to buy that time what the obligation is if you
are a network you're going
to make that time free and available to candidates do you think that that's
something that could be
viable in America we could could you convince CBS and NBC and ABC to go along
with something like
that no you couldn't convince them you'd have to pass legislation to make that
happen but everyone's
online today I mean the entire country is essentially getting email and
Facebook and all that jazz like
why bother doing it in this particular medium that has an inherent time
constraint well you're right
I mean the internet has revolutionized politics and in many ways good ways we
use our social media our
email list which is very large we every day we send them out stuff and other
candidates are doing it the
same way but television still has a very important role to be playing I'm sure
it does but I mean the
ability to discuss things in in long form like you can do online like you can
do right here right now
right you can't get that on television well you could I mean if you had sure
you would have to stay
would have to interrupt you every 15 minutes or no no no no no what I'm saying
about is it is in
what goes on in other countries if I'm not mistaken I don't hold me to this I
think in the UK
you remember the labor party you're a candidate mm-hmm here's 30 minutes of
time and you do with
it as you want you want to speak 30 minutes on health care whatever it may be
you can do that
really yeah and they don't interrupt with commercial no no no no that's the law
that they have given
this is the candidates opportunity to speak at length to the people of the
country what what are the
misconceptions of you because here's here's the if you go to the knee-jerk
conservative reaction you talk
to people who are not interested in anyone that wants to be a democratic
socialist they hear the
name Bernie Sanders the negative implications are that you are somehow or
another going to take their
money right did you that annoying to you yes it is of course it is and also
that I miss the Maduro
I'm a dictator I'd love dictatorships and all that stuff and the truth is Joe
that if you look at the
issues that I campaign on and what I believe on they are really not terribly
radical they exist in many
countries all over the world for example just we can start on health care if
you'd like is the idea
that health care is a human right not a privilege a radical idea I don't think
it is it's not and the
truth is we are the only major country on earth many people don't know this we're
the only major country
on earth not to guarantee health care to all people as a human right and yet we
end up spending almost
twice as much per capita on health care the function and you can argue with me
if you want but the
function of the current health care system is not to provide quality care at
all it is to make tens of
billions of dollars in profit for the drug companies and the insurance
companies that's the function
if you go to Canada and I live 50 miles away from the Canadian border you have
major heart surgery
you're in the hospital for a month do you know what the bill is when you get
out zero you got it you
got any doctor you want you don't have to take out your wallet and yet they
guarantee health care to
all of their people and they spend one half of what we spend that's kind of
what I want to do and I
don't think that that's terribly radical we have a program now which everybody
knows it's called
Medicare was started by Lyndon Johnson back in 1965 it is a popular program all
that I want to do over a
four-year period is to expand it today eligibility age is 65 want to take
another 55 45 35 everybody
over four-year period that's about it and I want to expand benefits to include
dental care hearing aids
and eyeglasses as well that's about it not too radical that doesn't sound
radical at all now when you say
that they that Canada spends less obviously they have less people you mean less
per capita yes half
per capita exactly per capita and and the quality of care is as good or better
do they have problems
yeah they have problems everybody has problems but overall the health care
experts will tell you the
quality of care there is as good or better than it is in our country so what's
the hurdle okay I'll
tell you exactly what the hurdle is the hurdle is exactly the same thing is in
every other aspect of
our lives it's the power of money all right listen to this over the last 20
years the drug companies
alone have spent four and a half billion dollars in 20 years on lobbying and
campaign contributions
that's what we're up against the knowledge and I mock my words within a short
period of time you will
see TV ads California all over this country demonizing Bernie Sanders he wants
to do this terrible thing to
you he wants to do that they have unbelievable amounts of money and politicians
are frightened of that
power give you one example back in 2016 I got involved here in a little way
with an effort on the part of
the nurses to control the cost of prescription drugs in California you may
recall that effort I do it was a
ballot item in one state here in California do you know how much the drug
companies alone spent to defeat
that effort they spent 131 million dollars on one ballot item in one state all
right last year the top 10
drug companies made 69 billion dollars a week ago I went to Canada with a
number of Americans who are
dealing with diabetes we bought insulin in Windsor Ontario for one-tenth the
price ten percent of the
price same exact product being charged in America so you got drug companies
that are engaged in collusion
and in price fixing who are incredibly greedy and the result is many elderly
people many working people
simply cannot afford the medicine they need it this is it's unbelievable and
the reason for all of that
stuff is we are the only country in the world that does not negotiate with the
drug companies they can
charge you any price they want and that has to do with the fact that we don't
have a national health care
program Medicare is not negotiating etc is this something that can really be
implemented inside
of four years yeah it's an enormous endeavor well I want you to think back
think back Joe in 1965
you had Lyndon Johnson as president and by the way this idea of national health
care this has been talked
about literally since Teddy Roosevelt it's not a newer concept health care is a
human right that's what
Teddy Roosevelt was talking about that's what FDR was talking about Harry
Truman was talking about it Kennedy
was talking about it Kennedy got killed Lyndon Johnson picked up the mantle and
their idea was according to
people in their administration will start with the elderly who are most
impacted by by health care costs and
sickness will start and they did in 1965 without the technology we have today
they implemented Medicare
19 million people elderly people signed up in the first year so if you could
start a brand new program and
have 19 million people sign up with a technology that is way way behind where
we are today why can't we
over a four-year period simply expand that program I don't think it's such a
difficult operation so when
you talk about the drug companies and the lobbyists and the enormous amount of
money that they spend is
is this does this exist anywhere else other than the United States lobbyists on
that level no no
of course not uh and the reason you know in Canada what you have is you have a
national health care
program and so forth and they sit down and a they negotiate with the drug
companies they have their own
approach but every other major country on earth says to the drug companies of
course you can't charge us
any price you want this is a reasonable price tell me what your profits are
what your expenditures are
this is a price for us you can walk in you know if you have an illness you
could walk into the pharmacy
tomorrow and the price has been doubled and you say to the pharmacist what
happened they said they just
raised their prices they could do it any day they want any price they want now
lobbyists are in in general
when people talk about lobbyists it's it's an unattractive term we think a bit
in terms of a negative
we don't we don't think of oh thank god there's lobbyists we think wow there's
someone with enormous
amounts of money using that money to gain influence on politicians and it
shapes regular people it shapes
our lives mostly in a negative way this is the way most people look at it i'm
not saying it's correct
why why do we have that system in place like why do we have lobbyists why is it
legal for someone to
spend exorbitant amount of money exorbitant amounts of money to affect our
civilization to affect the
way our culture works now you're taking us into a whole new area yeah all right
let's look all right
can i let me detour and i'll come back please do all right today in america
you got three people owning more wealth than the bottom half of the american
society you don't see
that on television too much do you no 